By nature man thinks but seldom.  He learns to think as he acquires the other arts, but with even greater difficulty.  In both sexes alike I am only aware of two really distinct classes, those who think and those who do not; and this difference is almost entirely one of education.  A man who thinks should not ally himself with a woman who does not think, for he loses the chief delight of social life if he has a wife who cannot share his thoughts.  People who spend their whole life in working for a living have no ideas beyond their work and their own interests, and their mind seems to reside in their arms.  This ignorance is not necessarily unfavourable either to their honesty or their morals; it is often favourable; we often content ourselves with thinking about our duties, and in the end we substitute words for things.  Conscience is the most enlightened philosopher; to be an honest man we need not read Cicero’s De Officiis, and the most virtuous woman in the world is probably she who knows least about virtue.  But it is none the less true that a cultivated mind alone makes intercourse pleasant, and it is a sad thing for a father of a family, who delights in his home, to be forced to shut himself up in himself and to be unable to make himself understood.

Moreover, if a woman is quite unaccustomed to think, how can she bring up her children?  How will she know what is good for them?  How can she incline them to virtues of which she is ignorant, to merit of which she has no conception?  She can only flatter or threaten, she can only make them insolent or timid; she will make them performing monkeys or noisy little rascals; she will never make them intelligent or pleasing children.

Therefore it is not fitting that a man of education should choose a wife who has none, or take her from a class where she cannot be expected to have any education.  But I would a thousand times rather have a homely girl, simply brought up, than a learned lady and a wit who would make a literary circle of my house and install herself as its president.  A female wit is a scourge to her husband, her children, her friends, her servants, to everybody.  From the lofty height of her genius she scorns every womanly duty, and she is always trying to make a man of herself after the fashion of Mlle. de L’Enclos.  Outside her home she always makes herself ridiculous and she is very rightly a butt for criticism, as we always are when we try to escape from our own position into one for which we are unfitted.  These highly talented women only get a hold over fools.  We can always tell what artist or friend holds the pen or pencil when they are at work; we know what discreet man of letters dictates their oracles in private.  This trickery is unworthy of a decent woman.  If she really had talents, her pretentiousness would degrade them.  Her honour is to be unknown; her glory is the respect of her husband; her joys the happiness of her family.  I appeal to my readers to give