er prominence with the advance of thought since the Revolution. It
is that the sphere and destiny of women are among the three or four
foremost questions in social improvement. This is now perceived on all
sides, profound as are the differences of opinion upon the proper
solution of the problem. A hundred years ago this perception was vague
and indefinite, but there was an unmistakable apprehension that the
Catholic ideal of womanhood was no more adequate to the facts of life,
than Catholic views about science, or property, or labour, or political
order and authority.

Diderot has left some curious and striking reflections upon the fate and
character of women. He gives no signs of feeling after social
reorganisation; he only speaks as one brooding in uneasy meditation over
a very mournful perplexity. There is no sentimentalising, after the
fashion of Jean Jacques. He does not neglect the plain physical facts,
about which it is so difficult in an age of morbid reserve to speak with
freedom, yet about which it is fatal to be silent. He indulged in none
of those mischievous flatteries of women, which satisfy narrow
observers, or coxcombs, or the uxorious. "Never forget," he said, "that
for lack of reflection and principles, nothing penetrates down to a
certain profoundness of conviction in the understanding of women. The
ideas of justice, virtue, vice, goodness, badness, float on the surface
of their souls. They have preserved self-love and personal interest with
all the energy of nature. Although more civilized than we are outwardly,
they have remained true savages inwardly.... It is in the passion of
love, the access of jealousy, the transports of maternal tenderness, the
instants of superstition, the way in which they show epidemic and
popular notions, that women amaze us; fair as the seraphin of Klopstock,
terrible as the fiends of Milton.... The distractions of a busy and
contentious life break up our passions. A woman, on the contrary, broods
over her passions; they are a fixed point on which her idleness or the
frivolity of her duties holds her attention fast.... Impenetrable in
dissimulation, cruel in vengeance, tenacious in their designs, without
scruples about the means of success, animated by a deep and secret
hatred against the despotism of man--it seems as if there were among
them a sort of league, such as exists among the priests of all
nations.... The symbol of women in general is that of the Apocalypse, on