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..