1744-1794.
Marie Jean Antoine de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet, was born at Saint
Quentin, in Picardy, on the 17th of September, 1744. It is said that at
an early age he gave tokens of the talents that distinguished him. The
bent of his genius led him to the study of the exact sciences. It is the
distinction of these pursuits that they lead at once to celebrity. A
discovery in mathematics can neither be denied nor passed over.
Condorcet, at the age of twenty-one, was the author of a memoir on the
integral calculus, one of the highest branches of the pure mathematics,
in which at that time but small advances had been made, although it has
since become one of the most powerful instruments of physical
investigation. This essay gave him at once a title to be regarded as a
successor worthy of Newton and Leibnitz, whose discoveries in the
infinitesimal analysis he subsequently extended. This essay was
published in the _Mémoires des Savants Étrangers_, and he was elected
coadjutor of Grandjean de Fouchy, in the secretaryship of the Academy of
Sciences. Eager to justify the choice of the Academy, he continued
successfully to direct his labours to the higher mathematics. Among his
essays on these branches of science may be mentioned a general method of
finding the integral of an equation in finite terms whenever such an
integral exists, and the general solution of the problem of maxima and
minima. Had he continued to cultivate pure mathematics, there can be no
doubt that he would have attained the greatest celebrity in that
department of science.
Condorcet's mind was one of those in which reason preponderates to the
exclusion of the imagination, so that whatever could not be definitively
proved to his understanding he considered absurd. This texture of
intellect, at a time when philosophy was at work to discard, not only
the errors of Catholicism, but to subvert Christianity itself, led him
to ally himself with men who, while they exerted themselves to enlighten
and enfranchise their fellow-creatures from the miseries of
superstition, unfortunately went a step beyond, and overthrew, though
they knew it not, the boundaries of morals as well as of religion. These
men, for the most part, benevolent, studious, and virtuous, believed it
easy to lead their fellow-creatures into the same road which they
themselves trod; and that, bigotry and superstition being overthrown,
persecution would vanish, and mankind live in a brotherhood of peace.
Their passions being under their control, they supposed that, could
reason be equally developed in all men, they would become, like
themselves, dispassionate and tolerant. Condorcet was the intimate
friend of D'Alembert; he visited Voltaire with him at Ferney, and was
hailed as the youngest and most promising of his disciples. The latter
certainly did not possess the calmness and disciplined mind of
D'Alembert, but his genius and ardent benevolence brought excuses for
the errors of his temper; and Condorcet, while he saw his faults, paid
the tribute of flattery which the patriarch of French literature
considered his due. As he became intimate with these philosophers, and
participated in their views, he began to consider that there were truths
of more importance than mathematical demonstrations,--truths that would
subvert the impostures of priests, and give men nobler and higher rules
of action than those instituted by the papal church. It is the
misfortune of Catholicism that, by entangling the absurd and the true,
those who throw off its errors are too apt, without examination, to cast
away the truths which it has overgrown and distorted; but which minds of
truer discernment can see and acknowledge. Condorcet, on first engaging
in the labours of moral philosophy, took the easier path of refuting
others, rather than developing novel ideas of his own. His application
and his memory had caused his mind to be richly stored with every kind
of knowledge--add to this he was a profound logician. His first work of
polemical philosophy was a refutation of the "Dictionnaire des Trois
Siècles," by Sabathier de Castres. He assumed the epistolary form of
argument, which is at once the easiest, and affords the fairest scope
for the various arms of ridicule and reasoning. Voltaire hailed his work
with delight, and bestowed a degree of praise highly encouraging to the
young author.
His next labour was the arrangement and examination of the "Pensées" of
Pascal. That illustrious Christian founded his system on the original
weakness and sin of man. He represented him as a miserable, feeble,
suffering being; spawned, as it were, by eternity, and cast on a narrow
shoal of time; unknowing of the past, terrified by the future, helpless
and lost in the present; and showed that the knowledge and the promises
of the Redeemer were the only stay and the only consolation of his
trembling, painful, and yet sinful existence. Condorcet took an opposite
view of human nature. He regarded it as a power that by its laws
assimilated all reason, all good, all knowledge, to its essence, but
that tyranny and error stepped between; and the frauds of priests and
the oppression of political institutions, taking from this being leisure
and freedom of thought, reduced him to the feeble, ignorant, erring
state in which most men are sunk. Casting the blame of the faults and
ignorance of man on governments, he declared that these ought to be the
objects of improvement and enlightenment to the philosopher; for, if
these were in the advance of human knowledge, instead of lagging so far
behind, mankind would speedily rise to a higher level, and grow, like
the laws they obeyed, wise, just, and equal. This work appeared of such
importance to Voltaire that he reprinted it himself, adding a preface,
in which he said, "This true philosopher holds Pascal in the scales, and
is the weightier of the two."
Condorcet was the friend of Turgot, a minister whose virtues and genius
attached to him all the more enlightened men of the day. His ministry,
however, was stormy, since he was among the first who endeavoured to
bring a remedy to the ruined finances of France, without being permitted
to strike at the root of the evil--unequal taxation and extravagant
expenditure. His edict touching the sale of corn excited popular
commotions, and was attacked by Necker. Condorcet undertook to answer
Necker's book, but was on the unpopular side, and therefore not read. He
wrote a series of laudatory biographical essays on various academicians,
and men of science and celebrity, Euler, Franklin, D'Alembert, and
others. In these he, at the same time, developed his scientific
knowledge and his theory of the perfectibility of the human species.
Every useful and liberal cause found him its partisan. He was one among
the opponents of negro slavery; and, feeling that diatribes against the
cruelty and wickedness of the slave trade would not avail with those who
regarded it as advantageous to the country, he argued to prove its
political and commercial inexpediency. He was a laborious and prolific
writer, urged on by a strong sense of duty; for, firmly believing that
the wisdom of philosophers was of vast influence in improving the moral
condition of mankind, he believed it to be the primal duty of thinking
men to propagate their opinions. In his life of Turgot he details his
theories of the perfectibility of his species, which the minister had
also entertained. He undertook an edition of the works of Voltaire, and
wrote the life of that great wit, one of the best and most elegant of
his works. To escape persecution, or to give greater force to his
writings, he published several of his writings under fictitious names.
In this manner, he brought out his "Reflections on Negro Slavery" under
the name of Swartz, a pastor of Bienne. A biographer observes on this
work, that "the simplicity, elegance, and precision of the style; the
forcible arguments, respect for misfortune, and indignation at crime;
the tone which inviolable probity inspires, and which art cannot
imitate, obtained signal success for this work. Those who were fortunate
enough to be intimate with Condorcet easily raised the veil under which
he concealed himself." In the same way, he adopted the name of a citizen
of Newhaven, when he wrote to refute a book by De Lolme, in praise of
the English constitution, insisting, in particular, on the benefits
arising from two legislative chambers. Condorcet argued that all just
government ought to be founded on giving preponderance to the majority;
and he brought all his logic to prove that to confide the task of
legislation to two chambers, one of which should propose and the other
sanction laws, was to give to the minority a power superior to that
enjoyed by the majority; since that which had been proposed unanimously
in one chamber might be rejected by a slight majority in the other. He
went on to establish maxims and legal fictions by which it would be
possible to ascertain the desires of the majority in a state,--a
question that occupied his serious consideration in other works.
Condorcet, in these writings, showed his attachment to all that should
ameliorate the social condition, and enlarge the sphere of intellect
among his fellow-creatures. He did not, in his reasonings, give
sufficient force to the influence of passion, especially when exerted
over masses, nor the vast power which the many have when they assert
themselves, nor the facility with which the interested few can lead
assembled numbers into error and crime. D'Alembert called Condorcet a
volcano covered by snow. There are men of great personal susceptibility,
uncontrollable passions, and excitable imaginations, who have the same
power over their fellow-creatures that fire has over materials cast upon
it--they impart their energy, even though it be for self-destruction, to
all around. There are others, and among such was Condorcet, of great but
regulated enthusiasm of soul;--which enthusiasm, derived from abstract
principles and founded on severe reason, is more steady, more
disinterested, and more enduring than that springing from passion; but
it exercises little immediate influence over others, and is acknowledged
and appreciated only in hours of calm. Amidst the tempest of political
struggles it is passed by as timid, cold, and impotent.
A philosopher of this sort was destined to have great influence at the
commencement of the French Revolution, while men acted from a sense of
right and a virtuous desire to found the changes they brought about on
reason, justice, and the good of mankind. His integrity caused him to be
respected, and his powers of mind to receive attention.
He anticipated change, and had contributed to it by spreading abroad his
opinions for the enfranchisement of the French people from the laws and
customs that ground them to the earth. When the ferment began he
assisted in directing it by his writings, and assembled at his house the
most distinguished men of the liberal party. He was now no longer a
young man. Habit had confirmed all his opinions, while mature years
imparted that calm which caused him to see clearly and act firmly, but
without precipitation or violence. On the convocation of the states
general, he wrote a declaration of the rights of man, to serve as a
guide and model to the future legislators of his country. He caused it
to be translated into English by Dr. Gems, and brought it out as the
work of an American.
[Sidenote: 1788.
Ætat.
44.]
When the states general met, he became more and more absorbed by the
political state of his country. He did not make one of the assembly; but
the influence from without was of vast importance, not only to inspire
the members with energy and constancy, but to daunt the court and the
nobles, who scarcely understood and longed to spurn the claimants of a
power of which they had long held possession, while they misused it to
the ruin first of their country and then of themselves. Condorcet wrote
a refutation of an address presented in favour of the court and the
privileged orders, and demanded a partial confiscation of church
property to pay the national debt. He published a pamphlet, entitled "On
what has been done, and what remains to do," full of clear and useful
views for the future. He thus became a portion of the revolution, and
allied himself with its more illustrious chiefs, who afterwards formed
the girondist party,--a sect which was republican in heart, but which
would have been satisfied with a limited monarchy, could they have
depended on the fidelity of the king to the constitution. The chief
object of Condorcet's attacks was the church. He was an infidel, and
believed philosophy to be a better guide than religion both for states
and individuals; besides this, he looked on the French clergy as a
peculiarly obnoxious priesthood. The quarrels of the molinists and
jansenists,--the extermination of the huguenots,--the war they carried
on against all knowledge and freedom,--made him ardently desire to limit
their power within strict bounds, and he was eager to lessen their
wealth, as the first sure step towards decreasing their influence.
On every occasion he came forward to enlighten and guide the decisions
of the assembly by his published arguments. He discussed the injury to
arise from a division of the legislative power into two chambers, and
showed great sagacity when he demonstrated the evils attendant on the
system of assignats.
The weakness of the unfortunate king, who yielded to the new state of
things only on compulsion, and turned his eyes towards the emigrants and
foreign potentates as deliverers, still hoping for a restoration to
absolute power, caused the moderate party of girondists to abandon the
cause of royalty altogether, and to believe that there was no
possibility of confirming the blessings which they believed that their
country reaped from the revolution, nor of protecting the nation from
invasion, and the re-establishment of absolutism armed with foreign
soldiers for the execution of vengeance, except in the dethronement of
the king and erection of a republic. The flight of Louis to Varennes put
the seal of conviction on these opinions. It was believed that he fled
only to return with the Austrians and the emigrants, armed to
exterminate the friends of liberty. Condorcet pronounced on this
occasion a violent speech against monarchy, and followed up his attack
by a series of bitter articles in a paper called "The Republican." His
popularity increased greatly through this course. He was designated by
the jacobins as governor of the dauphin, but Louis refused to ratify the
nomination.
[Sidenote: 1791.
Ætat.
47.]
He was also appointed commissioner of the treasury; which, at his
desire, changed its name to the national instead of the royal treasury;
and he was elected member of the new representative assembly by the
electors of the city of Paris itself. He drew up the article of "The
National Assembly" in the "Chronicle," on this occasion, to enlighten
his colleagues on the state of the nation, and the measures proper to be
taken for its security.
In all his speeches and projected decrees he mingled the most determined
opposition to such acts and establishments as he believed to be hostile
to the liberty of his country, with mildness and justice towards
individuals. Thus, on the 25th of October, he made a speech on the
subject of emigration, which at the time that it was delivered excited
the warmest applause, and the printing of it was voted. In this
discourse, he drew a line between the emigrants who left their country
for the sake merely of withdrawing from the political disturbances, and
those who entertained the nefarious project of exciting foreign powers
to invade France, and meditated carrying arms themselves against their
countrymen. He denounced the connivance of the court with the intrigues
at Coblentz. He showed the necessity of firm measures, and asserted that
an unasked pardon held out to the emigrants gave birth to contempt
merely among the haughty nobles who expected a speedy triumph over a
class of men whom they despised. A few days after, the mountain party
attacked his purposed decree as insufficient and feeble, and it was
abandoned.
This alliance with foreign governments and the complicity of the court
with the emigrants, roused a spirit in France, at first noble and
heroic, till, led away by base and sanguinary men, grandeur of purpose
merged into ferocity, and heroism became a thirst of blood such as
mankind had never displayed before towards men of the same colour and
language as themselves, and can be compared only to the conduct of the
Spaniards in the newly discovered world.
But the first burst of generous indignation against the traitors who
carried arms against their country, and the crowned foes who denounced
the actual government of France as rebellious, to be punished by the
devastation and subjection of the nation, found an echo in every
patriotic heart not misled by enthusiasm for royalty. On the 27th of
December Vergniaud proposed an address to the French people, which was
greatly applauded though not adopted. Two days after Condorcet presented
his declaration, which was received with triumphant and unanimous
acclamations. This declaration is dignified and firm, and shows the just
as well as generous spirit which animated the greater portion of the
assembly, till the panic engendered by the advance of the armies threw
the power into the hands of the ferocious minority. "At the moment when,
for the first time since the acquirement of liberty,"--thus ran his
manifesto,--"the French people may find themselves reduced to exercise
the terrible right of war, her representatives owe to Europe and to all
humanity a declaration of the motives that have guided the resolutions
of France, and an exposition of the principles that will rule their
conduct. The French nation renounces the entering on any war with a view
of making conquests, and will never employ her force against the liberty
of any country. Such is the sacred vow by which we have allied our
welfare to the welfare of every other nation, and to which we will be
faithful. France will take up arms with regret but with ardour, to
insure her own safety, her internal tranquillity; and will lay them down
with joy when she no longer fears for that liberty and equality which
are become the only elements in which Frenchmen can live." When, soon
after, the country seemed menaced by civil war, the departments
regarding with fear and jealousy the proceedings in Paris, Condorcet
again ascended the tribune to propose an exposition of their conduct, as
due, not to the calumniators of the revolution, but to those timid and
mistaken men, who, at a great distance, were led away by false and
fabricated accounts. He then read an address which contained the history
of the labours of the assembly and an exposition of its principles. The
address was voted by acclamation, and ordered to be printed and
distributed in the departments.
The integrity of Condorcet raised him high in the esteem of his
countrymen; as springing from the class of nobles, his disinterestedness
could not be doubted. He loved his country, he loved reason and
knowledge, and virtuous conduct and benevolent sentiments. He was, with
all this, a determined republican. His favourite theory being the
perfectibility of mankind, he rejected that view of human nature which
inculcates the necessity of ruling the many by the few, and sinking the
majority of his fellow-creatures in ignorance and hard labour; he wished
all to be enlightened as to their duties, and all to tend equally to the
improvement of their intellectual and moral nature. These theories, if
they be mistaken, emanate from benevolent and just feelings. They made
him a democrat, because the very corner-stone of royalty and aristocracy
is the setting apart a class of men to possess the better gifts of
fortune and education, and the reduction of the rest to a state of
intellectual dependence and physical necessity.
[Sidenote: 1792.
Ætat.
48.]
When the king exercised his veto, and put a stop to the measures
considered necessary by the assembly for the safety of France,
Condorcet, even as early as the month of March, represented the
monarchical power as at open war with the nation, and proposed that the
king should be considered as having abdicated. His view met with few
co-operators at that crisis, and was set aside. He busied himself, at
the same time, in forming a plan of national education, and brought
forward a system on a more philosophical and comprehensive scale than
had hitherto been meditated. It was his design to secure to the human
race, to use his own expressions, the means of satisfying their
necessities, and securing their welfare; of knowing and exercising their
rights, and of understanding and fulfilling their duties; giving scope
to all to carry their industry to a state of perfection, and to render
themselves capable of the social functions which they were called upon
to exert; to develope to their extent the talents given them by nature;
and thus to establish in the nation a real equality, so to meet the
political equality established by law.
The system of instruction which was to realise so blessed a state of
society he considered as properly placed in the hands of government. He
looked forward, indeed, to the time when public establishments for
education would become superfluous and even detrimental; but this would
only be when right reason prevailed, and it was no longer necessary for
the wiser few to labour to destroy the prejudices and mistakes of the
ignorant many; when superstition should be no more; and when each man
should find in his own knowledge, and in the rectitude of his mind, arms
sufficient to combat every species of imposition.
Condorcet looked on virtue as capable of exact demonstration, as
conducive to public and individual happiness, and on man as a
sufficiently reasonable being to follow its dictates, if sufficiently
enlightened, without the aid of religion or the coercion of punishment.
He regarded the passions as capable of being controlled by the
understanding. He, benevolent and conscientious, practising no vice,
carefully extirpating from his mind all that he believed to be error,
was to himself a mirror in which the whole human race was reflected.
Also, like all the French politicians of that day, he wished to treat
mankind like puppets, and fancied that it was only necessary to pull
particular strings to draw them within the circle of order and reason.
We none of us know the laws of our nature; and there can be little doubt
that, if philosophers like Condorcet did educate their fellows into some
approximation to their rule of right, the ardent feelings and burning
imaginations of man would create something now un thought of, but not
less different from the results he expected, than the series of sin and
sorrow which now desolates the world. It is not for this that we would
throw a slur over the upright endeavours of the pious and the good to
improve their fellows; but we do over any endeavour of government to
bind the intellect in chains. It was, therefore, in some degree, for the
best, that his views were not followed out. When his plan for national
education and a national society of arts and sciences, charged with the
duty of overlooking and directing public instruction,--for the purpose
not only of enlightening the present generation, but of preparing the
human species for an indefinite advance in wisdom and virtue,--when this
plan was presented by the chief Girondists to the court, a friend of
Condorcet, struck with dismay at the degree of power that would accrue
to the rulers, said, "If they adopt your plan, our freedom is
destroyed." "Fear nothing," replied Condorcet, "ignorance and vanity
will make them reject it." Unfortunately, the treaty carried on by the
Girondists with the court on this occasion injured their popularity. The
French were at a crisis that demanded that their rulers should think
only of measures and acts adapted to it. The mountain party felt this,
and acted for the day, and thus succeeded in overthrowing their rivals,
who philosophically and calmly legislated for future generations, while
their single object ought to have been to save the living one from the
foreign foe and their own evil passions.
The manifesto of the duke of Brunswick was the first cause of the
madness which was soon to make France an example of the crimes that may
be committed by a people in the name of liberty. When first this
manifesto spread indignation and fear through France, Condorcet made
himself conspicuous by a speech proposing an address to the king to
express the discontent of the assembly at his lukewarm disapprobation of
the actions of the emigrants, and his want of energy in repulsing the
offers of foreign potentates to deliver him from the hands of his
subjects and the shackles of the constitution which he had accepted. The
subsequent dethronement of the king and establishment of a republic were
events after his own heart.
[Sidenote: 1792.]
A commission had been named, during the first days of August, to examine
the question of the abolition of monarchy, and Condorcet was named
reporter. He considered it, in the first place, necessary to explain to
the people the grounds on which he went, and drew up a paper which he
called "Instruction préparatoire sur l'Exercise du Droit de
Souveraineté;" in which he expounded, that as foreign potentates had
denounced every Frenchman who defended the liberties of his country as
rebels to be punished by death, and as the monarch treacherously
weakened their powers of defence against the foe, so was it right and
necessary that the nation should take the sovereignty into their own
hands. When the events of the 10th of August had sealed the fate of the
unhappy Louis, Condorcet proposed a declaration of the motives that led
to his being set aside, which, while it strongly accused the monarch and
his court of betraying the cause of the people, was animated by a spirit
of fairness, moderation, and dignity, that did honour to the cause which
he espoused.
Condorcet's popularity was now at its height and he was courted even by
the jacobins and the mountain party. He was invited by several
departments to represent them in the new convention. Madame Roland
accuses him of pusillanimity: perhaps her accusation is partly founded
on the fact that at this moment of fierce rivalship and strife between
the Girondists and Mountain, he rather strove to conciliate the latter
than to drive the struggle to extremities. He had a high esteem for the
talents of Danton, and often remarked, with regard to the jacobins, that
it were better to moderate than to quarrel with them. He was named at
this time one of the committee to draw up a constitution, and his
labours were chiefly employed on this object.
Looking upon the king as the treacherous enemy of the new state of
things in France, and therefore, according to his reasoning, of France
itself, he did not hesitate to name Louis a traitor during the debate
that followed the monarch's trial; but he did not vote for his death.
"All different degrees of punishment for the same offence," he argued,
"was an offence against equality. The punishment of conspirators is
death; but this punishment is contrary to my principles, and I will
never vote it. I cannot vote for imprisonment, for no law gives me the
power; I vote for the heaviest punishment established in the penal code
that is not death." He afterwards voted for the reprieve for the king
until the peace; but the struggle of the Girondists to save the
monarch's life was, as is known, useless.
In drawing up a constitution the philosopher thought more of future
generations than the present: he considered France as ground cleared of
all encumbrance, on which to raise an edifice of government designed in
strict accordance to justice and the permanent welfare of mankind: to
continue the metaphor, he gave no heed to the more than inequalities of
soil,--the gulfs and chasms produced by the earthquake-revolution. His
report of the labours of the committee, together with the speech he made
on presenting it, was, however, received at first with acclamation, and
ordered to be printed. The jacobins disapproved tacitly in the
commencement, but by degrees they raised accusations against Condorcet
on account of the limited power which he committed to the people.
Underhand disapprobation was spread abroad, but did not become so
current, but that the committee of public safety applied to him to draw
up a manifesto, which the convention wished to address to every nation
and government, with regard to the violation of the law of nations in
the persons of four deputies delivered up by Dumouriez to the Austrians:
they admired him as a writer, and believed that their cause would be
eloquently and well defended by his pen. He wrote with great fervour
both against Lafayette and Dumouriez, as having betrayed the cause of
their country, and appealed against the conduct of Austria to the
interests and sense of justice of every free country.
[Sidenote: 1793.
Ætat.
49.]
Even on the approach of the 31st of May, notwithstanding his intimacy
with Roland and other Girondists on whom the Mountain party were about
to seize, Condorcet continued to be consulted and employed by the
committee of public safety. Those of the girondists who, foreseeing the
anarchy that must ensue from the triumph of the jacobins, considered
their overthrow of more immediate importance than the repulsing the foe
from the soil of France, disapproved of Condorcet's working for their
enemies: he kept apart from both, while he laboured for the cause of the
republic, and remarked that his friends were offended because he did not
break with the committee of public safety; and the committee, on the
other hand, desired that he should refrain from all intercourse with his
friends. "I endeavour," he added, "that each party shall think less of
itself and a great deal more of the commonwealth." He began to perceive,
however, that it was impossible any longer to use measures of
conciliation with Robespierre, but he hoped to restrain him by fear: the
latter, however, triumphed. The 31st of May brought with it the decree
of arrest of twenty-two Girondists: Condorcet was not among them. He
might by silence and prudence have continued for some time longer to sit
in the convention; but he saw with indignation the empty benches on
which his friends used to appear, and the growing power of a ferocious
oligarchy. He denounced the weakness of the convention, and the tyranny
exercised over it by a few ambitious and resolute men, in a letter to
his constituents, which was denounced and sent for examination to the
committee of public safety. From this moment the jacobins marked him out
also for a victim; and the ex-capuchin Chabot denounced him for having
written against the new constitution of 1793; which superseded the one
he had drawn up: he was summoned to the bar, and a decree of arrest
passed against him.
The sanguinary characters and tenets of the leading jacobins had already
made him say that no one was sure of six months of life, and he
considered the decree of arrest synonymous to a sentence of death. He
escaped pursuit, and concealed himself. A generous woman, before unknown
to him, and who has never revealed her name to the world, gave him
refuge in her house. Denounced on the 3d of October, as Brissot's
accomplice, there was no doubt that had he been taken he had shared the
fate of the deputies who were guillotined in the month of November; but
his place of concealment was not suspected, and he remained in safety
till the August of the following year.
[Sidenote: 1794.
Ætat.
50.]
During this long seclusion, he projected occupation in writing. At
first, he meditated detailing the history of his political career; but
he reflected that his many labours for his country were irrefragable
documents; and, more attached to opinions which he considered pregnant
with the welfare of mankind, than to facts which were but the evanescent
forms of change, he applied himself to developing his theories in an
"Historical Sketch of the Progress of the Human Mind." This is his most
celebrated work. It is full of error and even of intolerance; still the
clearness of the views, the enthusiasm with which he developes them, the
order, precision, and the originality of his theories, render it
remarkable. He glances over the past, and argues that each succeeding
epoch in the history of mankind has brought moral improvement and
increase of knowledge. There are two views to be taken of human nature.
Condorcet insists that the moderns have more knowledge and wisdom and
moral power than the ancients. He founds this opinion on the great
progress made in scientific truths, and does not hesitate also to oppose
French literature to the Greek, as demonstrating the advance of the
human intellect in every branch. He compares also the states, wars, and
crimes of antiquity with modern society and institutions, and deduces
that we are more virtuous, more humane, and more reasonable than
preceding generations.
No greater poet has appeared since Homer composed the Iliad,--no more
acute philosopher than Aristotle,--no more virtuous character than
Socrates, nor sublimer hero than Regulus. By standing on ground reached
by the ancients, the mass may climb higher than the masses that went
before; but, in making progress, we do not develope more genius and
sagacity, but rather less, than those who prepared our way. It is to be
doubted, therefore, whether mankind can progress so as to produce
specimens superior to Homer, Aristotle, Socrates, Regulus, and many
others who adorned antiquity.
But it cannot be doubted, on the other hand, that progress has been made
in the general diffusion of knowledge and in the amelioration of the
state of society. Philosophers ought, therefore, not to dream of
removing the bounds of human perfection, such as we find it among the
best, but in bringing the many up to the standard of the few, and
causing nations to understand and aim at wisdom and justice with the
same ardour as individuals among them have been found to do.
Condorcet developed his views of human perfection while the principle of
evil was making giant inroads in France, and blood and terror were the
order of the day. Separated from all dear to him, his wife and child,
and not daring himself to see the light of heaven, he did not lose the
cheerfulness of his temper, nor mourn vainly over his disasters. In this
situation, he wrote an epistle to his wife in the character of a Pole
exiled to Siberia in 1768. In this are to be found a couplet since often
quoted relative to political victims,--
"Ils m'ont dit, 'Choisis d'être oppresseur ou victime:'
J'embrassai le malheur, et leur laissai le crime."
A couplet peculiarly applicable to him who would have been gladly
received by the violent party, and had the way open to him to rule,
instead of being sacrificed as a victim. He declares in this poem that
the anticipation of a violent death did not alter the serenity of his
soul, and speaks of the occupations that banished ennui from his
solitary place of refuge.
He was soon to lose this shelter: a newspaper fell into his hands in
which he read the decree that outlawed him, and denounced the pain of
death against any one who should harbour one of the proscribed. He
instantly resolved no longer to endanger his generous hostess,--she
endeavoured to dissuade him from this fatal step, but in vain: he
disguised himself as a countryman, and passed the barriers without a
passport. He directed his steps to Sceaux, where he hoped to find refuge
in the house of a friend; but he was absent in Paris, nor expected back
for three days, and Condorcet was obliged to hide in the neighbouring
quarries. After several days spent miserably in this spot, hunger forced
him to enter the little inn of Chamont. The avidity with, which he ate
the food placed before him, and his squalid appearance, drew the
attention of a member of the committee of public safety of Sceaux, who
happened to be present. He was asked for his passport, and, not having
one, was arrested and interrogated. No ready he hung on the lips of the
worshipper of truth, and his unsatisfactory answers, and a Horace found
in his pocket with marginal notes in pencil, contributed to reveal his
name. He was taken to Bourg-la-Reine. Such was his state of exhaustion
that he fainted at Châtillon, and it was found necessary to mount him on
a vine-dresser's horse. On his arrival at Bourg, he was thrown into a
dungeon, and forgotten by the jailor for the space of twenty-four hours,
when he was found dead; some suppose from the effects of poison; but the
probabilities are that he died of exhaustion, hunger, and cold.
The accusation against Condorcet, found in madame Roland's memoirs,
where she speaks of his cowardice, cannot be passed over, though we do
not give it absolute credence. Her asperity is not measured, though she
speaks highly of his intellect. "It may be said," she remarks, "of his
understanding and his person that it is a fine essence absorbed in
cotton. The timidity that forms the basis of his character, and which he
displays even in society, in his countenance and attitudes, does not
result from his frame alone, but seems inherent in his soul, and his
talents have furnished him with no means of subduing it." There must be
both misapprehension and exaggeration in this picture. We find no
pusillanimity in his last acts or writings. When he might have saved
himself among the Mountain party, he chose to share the fate of the
proscribed Girondists. This conduct could spring only from conscientious
and noble motives, and a courageous spirit. His numerous political
labours give no sign of lukewarmness or tergiversation. They are clear,
fervent, and bold with regard to those principles which he held dear. If
not profound, nor endowed with the highest order of genius, yet his
erudition, ready talent for argument, and admirable memory, give him a
high place among men of talent. As a politician, his unflinching war
against royalty and aristocracy place him among those politicians who
look on mankind as a species, and legislate for them as an equal whole,
instead of dividing them into ranks and tribes. His benevolence made him
the enemy of oppression, and he expressed this when he exclaimed, "Peace
with cottages, war on castles!" which, had it comprised the history of
revolution, the history of France were not stained with its darkest
pages. The _sans-culottes_ did not spare cottages: they made war on all
who were not as ferocious as themselves: Condorcet was among the
victims. Benevolence, justice, and attachment to the cause of freedom,
remained warm in his heart to the end. Not long before his death,
anticipating the speedy close of his existence, he put on paper his last
wishes with regard to his daughter. He desired that she should be
educated in republican simplicity, and taught to crush every feeling of
vengeance towards his destroyers. "Let her know," he wrote, "that none
ever entered my heart."
His wife was a woman of great beauty, merit, and talent, and was the
author of some philosophical works. She was thrown into prison by
Robespierre, but escaped the guillotine, and did not die till 1822,
having lived many years in Paris, surrounded by the remnants of the
French republicans and philosophers of 1793. His daughter was
distinguished for her unpretending virtues and accomplished mind. She
became the wife of the celebrated Arthur O'Connor.