the front of which is inscribed _Mystery_.... If we have more reason
than women have, they have far more instinct than we have."[59] All this
was said in no bitterness, but in the spirit of the strong observer.

Cynical bitterness is as misplaced as frivolous adulation. Diderot had a
deep pity for women. Their physical weaknesses moved him to compassion.
To these are added the burden of their maternal function, and the burden
of unequal laws. "The moment which shall deliver the girl from
subjection to her parents is come; her imagination opens to a future
thronged by chimaeras; her heart swims in secret delight. Rejoice while
thou canst, luckless creature! Time would have weakened the tyranny that
thou hast left; time will strengthen the tyranny that awaits thee. They
choose a husband for her. She becomes a mother. It is in anguish, at the
peril of their lives, at the cost of their charms, often to the damage
of their health, that they give birth to their little ones. The organs
that mark their sex are subject to two incurable maladies. There is,
perhaps, no joy comparable to that of the mother as she looks on her
first-born; but the moment is dearly bought. Time advances, beauty
passes; there come the years of neglect, of spleen, of weariness. 'Tis
in pain that Nature disposes them for maternity; in pain and illness,
dangerous and prolonged, she brings maternity to its close. What is a
woman after that? Neglected by her husband, left by her children, a
nullity in society, then piety becomes her one and last resource. In
nearly every part of the world, the cruelty of the civil laws against
women is added to the cruelty of Nature. They have been treated like
weak-minded children. There is no sort of vexation which, among
civilised peoples, man cannot inflict upon woman with impunity."[60]

The thought went no further, in Diderot's mind, than this pathetic
ejaculation. He left it to the next generation, to Condorcet and others,
to attack the problem practically; effectively to assert the true theory
that we must look to social emancipation in women, and moral discipline
in men, to redress the physical disadvantages. Meanwhile Diderot
deserves credit for treating the position and character of women in a
civilised society with a sense of reality; and for throwing aside those
faded gallantries of poetic and literary convention, that screen a broad
and dolorous gulf.

CHAPTER IV.

THE NEW PHILOSOPHY.

It is a com