CONVERSATION IX - The Regime as a whole

Summary

The Woman.—In this final study, I am aware, my father, that I have to be nearly as passive as I was toward the doctrine, though I expect to find in it fewer difficulties. The regime does not offer me an essentially affective domain, as was that of the worship, where at times I could by my own effort anticipate your explanations. Here the heart is no longer competent to inspire me with views which frequently imply the maturest experience and the deepest reflection, both naturally forbidden the sex whose contemplations can hardly pass with good result beyond the limits of private life. For it is now necessary to construct directly the general rules which should preside over human acts, the habitual most of all, but also the exceptional. Now, to determine these rules demands an accurate conception of our whole existence, collective no less than individual, in order to judge the real results attendant on each system of conduct. The aberrations of feeling must in such conception be the more shunned, in that their influence would here be more noxious, from bearing immediately on our practical and social life.

The Priest.—It must not be, my daughter, that this becoming reserve conceal from you the fundamental office assigned to your sex by the whole human regime. The Positive worship has for its main object the development of the feelings required by the disposition to live for others.