It is monstrous that condemnation, even for life, to a felon's
punishment, should leave an unhappy victim bound to, and in the wife's
case under the legal authority of, the culprit. M. Comte could feel for
the injustice in this special case, because it chanced to be the
unfortunate situation of his Clotilde. Minor degrees of unworthiness may
entitle the innocent party to a legal separation, but without the power
of re-marriage. Second marriages, indeed, are not permitted by the
Positive Religion. There is to be no impediment to them by law, but
morality is to condemn them, and every couple who are married
religiously as well as civilly are to make a vow of eternal widowhood,
"le veuvage éternel." This absolute monogamy is, in M. Comte's opinion,
essential to the complete fusion between two beings, which is the
essence of marriage; and moreover, eternal constancy is required by the
posthumous adoration, which is to be continuously paid by the survivor
to one who, though objectively dead, still lives "subjectively." The
domestic spiritual power, which resides in the women of the family, is
chiefly concentrated in the most venerable of them, the husband's
mother, while alive. It has an auxiliary in the influence of age,
represented by the husband's father, who is supposed to have passed the
period of retirement from active life, fixed by M. Comte (for he fixes
everything) at sixty-three; at which age the head of the family gives up
the reins of authority to his son, retaining only a consultative voice.

This domestic Spiritual Power, being principally moral, and confined to
a private life, requires the support and guidance of an intellectual
power exterior to it, the sphere of which will naturally be wider,
extending also to public life. This consists of the clergy, or
priesthood, for M. Comte is fond of borrowing the consecrated
expressions of Catholicism to denote the nearest equivalents which his
own system affords. The clergy are the theoretic or philosophical class,