r frivolous accomplishments, do we
not show our real contempt, while we mask it with a show of deference
and respect?"

Holbach was a rash and rather superficial metaphysician, but the
warm-hearted and honest pages which follow this opening inspire a deep
respect for the man. He talks of the absurdities of women's education;
draws a bitter picture of a woman's fate in a loveless marriage of
convenience; remarks that esteem is necessary for a happy marriage, but
asks sadly how one is to esteem a mind which has emerged from a
schooling in folly; assails the practice of gallantry, and the
fashionable conjugal infidelities of his day; writes with real
indignation of the dangers to which working-class girls are exposed;
proposes to punish seduction as a crime no less cruel than murder, and
concludes by confessing that he would like to adopt Plato's opinion that
women should share with men in the tasks of government, but dreads the
effects which would flow from the admission of the corrupt ladies of his
day to power.

Twenty years later this promising beginning bore fruit in the mature and
reasoned pleading of Condorcet for the reform of women's education.
There was no subject on which this noble constructive mind insisted with
such continual emphasis. His feminism (to use an ugly modern word), was
an integral part of his thinking. He remembered women when he wrote of
public affairs as naturally as most men forget them. He deserves in the
gratitude of women a place at least as distinguished as John Stuart
Mill's. The best and fullest statement of his position is to be found in
the report and draft Bill on national education (Sur l'Instruction
Publique), which he prepared for the Revolutionary Convention in 1792
(see also p. 109). He maintains boldly that the system of national
education should be the same for women as for men. He specially insists
that they should be admitted to the study of the natural sciences (these
were days when it was held that a woman would lose her modesty if she
studied botany), and thinks that they would render useful services to
science, even if they did not attain the first rank. They ought to be
educated for many reasons. They must be able to teach their children. If
they remain ignorant, the curse of inequality will be introduced into
the family, and mothers will be regarded by their sons with contempt.
Nor will men retain their intellectual interests, unless they can share
them with women. La