Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/283

Rh turn his mind from the idea of attempting this, by occupy ing it otherwise, that his wife and some of his friends, with the co-operation of Madame Vernet, prevailed on him to engage in the composition of the work by which he is best known the Esquisse d un tableau historique des proges de I esprit humain. Certain circumstances having led him to believe that the house of Madame Vernet, 21 Rue Servandoni, was suspected and watched by his enemies, he, by a fatally successful artifice, baffled the vigilance of his generous friend and escaped. Disappointed in finding even a night s shelter at the chateau of one whom he had befriended, he had to hide for three days and nights in the thickets and stone-quarries of Clamart. On the evening of the 7th April 1794 not, as Carlyle says, on a &quot;bleared May morning,&quot; with garments torn, with wounded leg, with famished looks, he entered a tavern in the village named, and called for an omelette. &quot; How many eggs in your omelette 1 ?&quot; &quot;A dozen.&quot; &quot; What is your trade 1 ?&quot; &quot;A carpenter.&quot; &quot;Carpenters have not hands like these, and do not ask for a dozen eggs in an omelette.&quot; When his papers were demanded he had none to show ; when his person was searched a Horace was found on him. The villagers seized him, bound him, haled him forthwith on bleeding feet towards Bourg-la-Reine ; he fainted by the way, was set on a horse offered in pity by a passing peasant, and, at the journey s end, was cast into the cold damp prison-cell. When the jailers looked in on the morning his body lay dead on the floor. Whether he had died from suffering and exhaustion, from apoplexy, or from poison, is an undetermined question. Condorcet held many opinions which comparatively few will be found ready to indorse, but he was undoubtedly a most sincere, generous, and noble-minded man. He was eager in the pursuit of truth, ardent in his love of human good, and ever ready to undertake labour or encounter danger on behalf of the philanthropic plans which his fertile mind contrived and his benevolent heart inspired. He lived at a time when calumny was rife, and various slanders were circulated regarding him, but fortunately the slightest examination proves them to have been inexcus able fabrications. That while openly opposing royalty he was secretly soliciting the office of tutor to the Dauphin ; that he was accessory to the murder of the Due de la Rochefoucauld; or that he sanctioned the burning of the literary treasures of the learned congregations, are stories which can be distinctly shown to be utterly untrue. Condorcet s philosophical fame is chiefly associated with the work which he wrote when lying concealed from the emissaries of Robespierre in the house of Madame Vernet. With the vision of the guillotine before him, with con fusion and violence around him, he comforted himself by trying to demonstrate that the evils of life had arisen from a conspiracy of priests and rulers against their fellows, and from the bad laws and institutions which they had succeeded in creating, but that the human race would finally conquer its enemies and completely free itself of its evils. His fundamental idea is that of a human perfectibility which has manifested itself in continuous progress in the past, and must lead to indefinite progress in the future. He represents man as starting from the lowest stage of barbarism, with no superiority over the other animals which does not result directly from superiority of bodily organization, and as advancing uninterruptedly, at a more or less rapid rate, in the path of enlightenment, virtue, and happiness. The stages which the human race has already gone through, or, in other words, the great epochs of history, are regarded as nine in number. The first three can confessedly be described only conjecturally from general observations as to the development of the human faculties, and the analogies of savage life. In the first epoch, men are united into hordes of hunters and fishers, who acknow ledge in some degree public authority and the claims of family relationship, and who make use of an articulate language. In the second epoch the pastoral state property is introduced, and along with it inequality of con ditions, and even slavery, but also leisure to cultivate intelligence, to invent some of the simpler arts, and to acquire some of the more elementary truths of science. In the third epoch the agricultural state as leisure and wealth are greater, labour better distributed and applied, and the means of communication increased and extended, progress is still more rapid. With the invention of alphabetic writing the conjectural part of history closes, and the more or less authenticated part commences. The fourth and the fifth epochs are represented as correspond ing to Greece and Rome. The Middle Ages are divided into two epochs, the former of which terminates with the Crusades, and the latter with the invention of printing. The eighth epoch extends from the invention of printing to the revolution in the method of philosophic thinking accomplished by Descartes. And the ninth epoch begins with that great intellectual revolution, and ends with the great political and moral Revolution of 1789, and is illustrious, according to Condorcet, through the discovery of the true system of the physical universe by Newton, of human nature by Locke and Condillac, and of society by Turgot, Price, and Rousseau. There is an epoch of the future a tenth epoch, and the most original part of Condorcet s treatise is that which is devoted to it. After insisting that general laws regulative of the past warrant general inferences as to the future, he argues that the three tendencies which the entire history of the past shows will be characteristic features of the future are : (1) the destruction of inequality between nations ; (2) the destruction of inequality between classes; and (3) the improvement of individuals, the indefinite perfectibility of human nature itself intellectually, morally, and physically. These propositions have been much misunderstood. The equality to which he represents nations and individuals as tending is not absolute equality, but equality of freedom and of rights. It is that equality which would make the inequality of the natural advantages and faculties of each community and person beneficial to all. Nations and men, he thinks, are equal, if equally free, and are all tending to equality because all tending to freedom. As to indefinite perfectibility, he nowhere denies that progress is conditioned both by the constitution of humanity and the character of its surroundings. But he affirms that these conditions are compatible with endless progress, and that the human mind can assign no fixed limits to its own advancement in knowledge and virtue, or even to the prolongation of bodily life. The book of Condorcet is pervaded by a spirit of exces sive hopefulness, and contains numerous errors of detail, which are fully accounted for by the circumstances in which it was written. Its value lies entirely in its general ideas. Its chief defects spring from its author s narrow and fanatical aversion to all philosophy which did not attempt to explain the world exclusively on mechanical and sensational principles, to all religion whatever, and especially to Christianity and Christian institutions, and to monarchy. Of the two editions of Condorcet s works which have been pub lished, the earlier is in 21, and the later, to which is pretixed a Biographic de Condorcet, by M. Arago, is in 10 volumes. There 13 an able essay on Condorcet in Mr J. Morley s Critical Mifcellanics. On Condorcet as an historical philosopher see A. Comte s Cours de PhilosojMe Positive, iv. 252-253, and Systbme de Politique Positive, iv., Appendice General, 109-111 ; Laurent s Etudes, xii. 121-126; Morley s Grit. Misc., 89-110 ; and Flint s Philosophy of History in France and Germany, i. 125-138. (B- F -&amp;gt;