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“Of course, Positivism claiming to be a creed of demonstration, not of faith, Regnier did not ask me to receive this proposition as his mere statement, but proceeded to establish its reasonableness by logic. I am going to give you what I remember of his argument, because I believe still, as I did when I heard it, that it is the only philosophical explanation of the instinctive reverence of man for woman which we have been talking about to-night. It was given to me, of course, as a doctrine peculiar to Positivism; but I don’t know of any form of religious belief, inconsistent with the recognition of the sacred quality of womanhood on the grounds given by Regnier. Indeed, I am by no means sure whether the doctrine as I received it is orthodox Positivism at all. I have reason to think that Regnier was quite too original a character for a very good interpreter, and should be interested to know how far his ideas were his own and how far his master’s.

“First he pointed out to me as matter of fact that there was no more striking feature of the modern and humane as compared with the ancient and barbaric world than the constantly growing tendency of the most civilized races to apotheosize womanhood. The virgin ideal had been set up by the larger part of Christendom as the object of divine honors. The age of chivalry had translated for all time the language of love into that of worship. Art had personified under the feminine form every noble and affecting ideal of the race, till now it was in the name of woman that man’s better part adjured his baser in every sort of strife towards the divine. Is it alleged that it is man’s passion for woman that has moved him thus in a sort to deify the sex? Passion is no teacher of reverence. Moreover, it is as the race outgrows the dominion of passion that it recognizes the worshipfulness of woman. The gross and sensual recognize in her no element of sacredness. It is the clear soul of the boy, the poet, and the seer which is most surely aware of it. Equally vain is it to seek the explanation in any general superiority of woman to man, either moral or mental. Her qualities are indeed in engaging contrast with his, but on the whole no such superiority has ever been maintained. How, then, were we to account for a phenomenon so great in its proportions that either it indicates a world-wide madness infecting the noblest nations while sparing the basest, or else must be the outcome of some profound monition of nature, which, in proportion as man’s upward evolution progresses, he becomes capable of apprehending? Why this impassioned exaltation by him of his tender companion? What is the secret spring that makes her the ceaseless fountain of lofty inspiration she is to him? What is the hint of divinity in her gentle mien that brings him to his knees? Who is this goddess veiled in woman whom men instinctively reverence yet cannot name?

“The adoration of woman, which may almost be called the natural religion of the modern man, springs from his recognition, instinctive when not conscious, that she is in an express sense, as he is not, the type, the representative, and the symbol of the race from which he springs, of that immortal and mystical life in which the secret of his own is hid. She is this by virtue, not of her personal qualities, but of the mother-sex, which, overbearing in part her individuality, consecrates her to the interests of the race, and makes her the channel of those irresistible attractions by which humanity exists and men are made to serve it. As compared with woman’s peculiar identification with the race, man’s relation to it is an exterior one. By his constitution he is above all an individual, and that is the natural line of his development. The love of woman is the centripetal attraction which in due time brings him back from the individual tangent to blend him again with mankind. In returning to woman he returns to humanity. All that there is in man’s sentiment for woman which is higher than passion and larger than personal tenderness–all, that is to say, which makes his love for her the grand passion which in noble hearts it is–is the fact that under this form his passion for the race finds expression. Mysterious ties, subtending consciousness, bind him, though seemingly separate, to the mighty life of humanity, his greater self, and these are the chords which, when ‘Love took up the harp of life,’… ‘passed in music out of sight.’ In woman humanity is enshrined and made concrete for the homage of man. This is the mighty indwelling which causes her to suggest something more august than herself, and invests her with an impersonal majesty commanding reverence.