ABSTRACT
As in the case of the individual, each human age or century appears, in the eyes of posterity, to have been dominated by a distinctive character, by an intimate, superior, unique and rigorous law, derived from its customs, ordering its facts and from which, at a distance, history would seem to originate. At first glance, a study of the eighteenth century discloses this general, constant and essential character, this supreme law of a society which is its culmination, its physiognomy and its secret. The soul of this age, the center of this world, the point from which all things radiate, the summit from which all things descend, the image upon which all things are modeled, is Woman.
