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 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]