CONDORCET, Marie-Jean-Antoine Caritat, marquis of. — Scholar of the sciences and philosophy, political figure, born at Ribemont in Picardy on 17 September 1741, died at Bourg-la-Reine on 29 March 1794. He devoted himself to the study of mathematics and at the age of only twenty-seven was admitted to the Academy of Sciences.
He sided with the Encyclopedists (v. ENCYCLOPÉDIE), whose spirit is evident in his Lettres d'un théologien (1772) and in his edition of Pascal. In 1782 he became a member of the French Academy. In 1786 he published the Vie de Turgot and in 1787 the Vie de Voltaire. Elected as a deputy, he proposed a famous Rapport sur l'instruction publique and worked on the Constitution. Falling into disfavour with the advent of the Commune, he had to go into hiding but was denounced. Captured and imprisoned at Bourg-la-Reine, he was found dead in his cell. It is not ruled out that he took his own life by poison.
During his time in hiding he composed the outline of a great work that he intended to write. It is the Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain. In it he sets out to demonstrate that the perfectibility of man has no limits and that progress may indeed be slowed, but can never be halted or reversed. He distinguished ten epochs. After considering how the first men united into peoples, rising from the state of shepherds to that of farmers and then inventing writing, he followed the development of the human spirit among the Greeks, witnessed the formation of the sciences, their progress, and their decline—caused chiefly by the difficulty of multiplying manuscripts and by the negligence of the Romans. The Arabs resumed the march of progress, which was accelerated by the invention of printing, the enemy of kings and priests. With Descartes, with American independence, and with the French Revolution, Condorcet saw the reign of reason prodigiously extended, and he contemplated the future, the tenth epoch, which was to realize the equality of peoples among themselves, the equality of citizens within each people, and the perfection of human faculties.
The book, written in elegant language, is an ode to reason and
Condorcet, Marie-Jean-Antoine — Portrait published in Condorcet-Turgot, Correspondance inédite (1770-1772), edited by C. Henry, Paris 1882 (engraving between pp. xii and xiii) — Rome, copy from the National Library.
contains many sound observations and useful suggestions; yet his anti-religious passion mars it and diverts its inspiration, noble in itself. His judgments on Christianity, in particular, are unjust to the point of ridicule and betray ignorance and prejudice that can only be explained, in some measure, by the environment of those tempestuous years. The work is on the Index (decree of 10 September 1827).