had brought reason to bear upon the current notions
of providence, inspiration, ecclesiastical tradition, and other
unlighted spots in the human mind, had perceived that the subjection of
women to a secondary place belonged to the same category, and could not
any more successfully be defended by reason. Instead of raging against
women for their boldness, their frivolousness, and the rest, as our
passionate sentimentalist did, the opposite school insisted that all
these evils were due to the folly of treating women with gallantry
instead of respect, and to the blindness of refusing an equally vigorous
and masculine education to those who must be the closest companions of
educated man. This was the view forced upon the most rational observers
of a society where women were so powerful, and so absolutely unfit by
want of intellectual training for the right use of social power.
D'Alembert expressed this view in a few pages of forcible pleading in
his reply to Rousseau,[355] and some thirty-two years later, when all
questions had become political (1790), Condorcet ably extended the same
line of argument so as to make it cover the claims of women to all the
rights of citizenship.[356] From the nature of the case, however, it is
impossible to confute by reason a man who denies that the matter in
dispute is within the decision and jurisdiction of reason, and who
supposes that his own opinion is placed out of the reach of attack when
he declares it to be the unanimous voice of the human race. We may
remember that the author of this philippic against love was at the very
moment brooding over the New Heloisa, and was fresh from strange
transports at the feet of the Julie whom we know.

The Letter on the Stage was the definite mark of Rousseau's schism from
the philosophic congregation. Has Jean Jacques turned a father of the
church? asked Voltaire. Deserters who fight against their country ought
to be hung. The little flock are falling to devouring one another. This
arch-madman, who might have been something, if he would only have been
guided by his brethren of the Encyclopaedia, takes it into his head to
make a band of his own. He writes against the stage, after writing a bad
play of his own. He finds four or five rotten staves of Diogenes' tub,
and instals himself therein to bark at his friends.[357] D'Alembert was
more tolerant, but less clear-sighted. He insisted that the little flock
should do its best to heal divisions instead