A General View of Positivism by Auguste Comte (learn to read books TXT) 📕

character until the ordinary age of marriage. Up to that time feminine influence over Man has been involuntary on his part. By marriage he enters into a voluntary engagement of subordination to Woman for the rest of his life. Thus he completes his moral education. Destined himself for action, he finds his highest happiness in honourable submission to one in whom the dominant principle is affection.

Positivism holds out to woman a most important sphere of public and private duty. This sphere, as we may now see, is nothing but a larger and more systematic development of the qualities by which she is characterized. Her mission is so uniform in its nature and so clearly defined, that there seems hardly room for much uncertainty as to her proper social position. It is a striking instance of the rule which applies universally to all human effort; namely, that the order of things instituted by man ought to be simply a consolidation and improvement of the natural order.

In all ages of transition, as in our own, there have been false and sophistical views of the social position of Woman. But we find it to be a natural law that Woman should pass the greater part of her life in the family; and this law has never been affected to any important extent. It has always been accepted instinctively, though the sophistical arguments against it have never yet been adequately refuted. The institution of the family has survived the subtle attacks of Greek metaphysics, which then were in all the vigour of their youth, and which were acting on minds that had no systematic principles to oppose to them. Therefore, profound as the intellectual anarchy of the present day may be, we need not be seriously alarmed when we see that nothing worse comes of it than shallow plagiarisms from ancient utopias, against which the vigorous satire of Aristophanes was quite enough to rouse general indignation. True, there is a more complete absence of social principles now, than when the world was passing from Polytheism to Monotheism; but our intellectual powers are more developed than they were then, and in moral culture our superiority is even greater. Women in those times were too degraded to offer even the opposition of their silence to the pedants who professed to be taking up their cause; the only resistance offered was of a purely intellectual kind. But happily in modern times the women of the West have been free; and have consequently been able to manifest such unmistakable aversion for these ideas, and for the want of moral discipline which gives rise to them, that, though still unrefuted philosophically, their mischievous effects have been neutralized. Nothing but women’s antipathy has prevented the practical outrages which seem logically to follow from these subversive principles. Among our privileged classes the danger is aggravated by indolence; moreover, the possession of wealth has a bad influence on women’s moral nature. Yet even here the evil is not really very deep or widely spread. Men have never been seriously perverted, and women still less so, by flattery of their bad propensities. The really formidable temptations are those which act upon our better instincts, and give them a wrong direction. Schemes which are utterly offensive to female delicacy will never really be adopted, even by the wealthier classes, who are less averse to them than others. The repugnance shown to them by the people, with whom the mischief that they would cause would be irreparable, is far more decided. The life which working people lead makes it very clear to both sexes what the proper position of each should be. Thus it will be in the very class where the preservation of the institution of the family is of the greatest importance, that Positivists will find the least difficulty in establishing their theory of the social position of women, as consequent on the sphere of public and private duty which has been here assigned to them.

Looking at the relation of this theory to other parts of the Positive system, we shall see that it follows from the great principle which dominates every other social problem, the principle of separating spiritual and temporal power. That Woman’s life should be concentrated in her family, and that even there her influence should be that of persuasion rather than that of command, is but an extension of the principle which excludes the spiritual power from political administration. Women, as the purest and most spontaneous of the moral forces of society, are bound to fulfil with rigorous exactness all the conditions which the exercise of moral force demands. Effectually to perform their mission of controlling and guiding our affections, they must abstain altogether from the practical pursuits of the stronger sex. Such abstinence, even when the arrangements of society may leave it optional, is still more desirable in their case than in the case of philosophers. Active life, incompatible as it is with the clearness and breadth of philosophic speculation, is even more injurious to delicacy of feeling, which is women’s highest claim to our respect and the true secret of their influence. The philosophic spirit is incompatible with a position of practical authority, because such a position occupies the mind with questions of detail. But to purity of feeling it is even more dangerous, because it strengthens the instincts of power and of gain. And for women it would be harder to avoid the danger of such a position than for men. Abounding as they do in sympathy, they are generally deficient in energy, and are therefore less able to withstand corrupting influences. The more we examine this important subject, the clearer it becomes that the present condition of women does not hamper them in their true work; that, on the contrary, it is well calculated to develop and even improve their highest qualities. The natural arrangements of society in this as in other respects are far less faulty than certain blind declaimers would have us believe.