Nicolas de Condorcet

“ Of the illustrious thinkers and writers who for two generations had been actively scattering the seed of revolution in France, only Condorcet survived to behold the first bitter ingathering of the harvest. Those who had sown the wind were no more ”

“ I could feel no pity on reading the account of the death of Condorcet (if true, though I doubt it) . He was one of the greatest monsters exhibited by history; and is said to have poisoned himself from famine and fear of the guillotine; and would be a new instance of what I suggested to you for a tract, to show, that though we must not assume a pretension to judging of divine judgments, yet we may believe that the economy of Providence has so disposed causes and consequences, that such villains as Danton, Robespierre, the Duke of Orleans, etc. etc. etc. do but dig pits for themselves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ But in the great crises men unconsciously produce that character which they have formed in the trivial round of daily life, and he who would be great at great moments must be a great character by his own fireside and in the dull routine of his ordinary work. The strong, quiet Condorcet was surely strong and quiet still—‘the victim of his foes,’ as he had said, ‘but never their instrument or their dupe.’ On that weary way, a compassionate vine-dresser took pity on his limping condition, and lent him a horse. ”

“ The man who ought, by the solemn unwritten laws of the family compact, to have been a heavy dragoon, was soon acknowledged as one of the finest original thinkers of his age, the friend of d’Alembert and of Voltaire, and something yet greater than a thinker—greater than any great man’s friend—a practical reformer and a generous lover of human-kind.
The character of Condorcet—he who with Turgot has been said to have been ‘the highest intellectual and moral personality of his century’—has in it much not only infinitely good, but also infinitely attractive. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The work on which his fame will rest is the Esquisse d’un tableau Historique des progrès de l’esprit Humain, where, for the first time, the idea of Progress as a law of Humanity was scientifically expounded. Condorcet believed in the indefinite perfectibility of man as the result of this law of progress. In 1791, inflamed with the zeal which he had helped to kindle for liberty, and the overthrow of inveterate abuses, he became a member of the National Assembly, but not proving violent enough for his colleagues, was forced to secrete himself in the house of a friend. ”

“ 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. ”

“ People are well aware that at this moment the object is much less how to mould a king, than to teach him not to wish to be one.’ [29] As all France was then bent on the new constitution, a king included, Condorcet’s republican assurance was hardly warranted, and it was by no means well received. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the very shadow of death, Condorcet told the story of men’s advance toward life, of the{290} evolution of their understanding from the earliest times until now. Calm, just, and serene, with not an intemperate line, not an angry thought, the ‘Progress’ reads as if it had been written by some tranquil philosopher who had seen his plan for man’s redemption adopted, and had received for his labour honours, peace, and competence. Its fault, indeed, is its too sanguine idealism. Condorcet, like many enthusiasts, thought his own way of salvation for man the only way ”

“ With a powerful preparation of opium and stramonium prepared by his friend Cabanis, the celebrated physician, and which Condorcet had long carried about with him in his ring, he had ‘cheated the guillotine.’ It was remembered afterwards, that when he left the Suards’ house, he had turned saying, ‘If I have one night before me, I fear no man; but I will not be taken to Paris.{296}’
That he who gave his life to the people should have defrauded them, as it were, of his death, strikes the one discord in the clear harmony of this true soul. ”

“ His sensibility caused Condorcet to abandon the barbarous pleasures of the chase, which had at first powerfully attracted him. [2] To derive delight from what inflicts- 169 - pain on any sentient creature revolted his conscience and offended his reason, because he perceived that the character which does not shrink from associating its own joy with the anguish of another, is either found or left mortally blunted to the finest impressions of humanity. ”

“ He glances over the past, and argues that each succeeding epoch in the history of mankind has brought moral improvement and {Pg 190} 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. ”

“ That he values knowledge only as a means to social action, is one of the highest titles to our esteem that any philosopher can have. Such a temper of mind has penetrated no man more fully than Condorcet, though there are other thinkers to whom time and chance have been more favourable in making that temper permanently productive. There is a fine significance in his words, after the dismissal of the great and virtuous Turgot from office: ‘We have had a delightful dream, but it was too brief. ”

“ Would it not have been more consistent with belief in human goodness to refer the doctrine to a merciful and affectionate and truly humanising anxiety to assuage the horrors of what is perhaps the most frightful idea that has ever corroded human character, the idea of eternal punishment? We could in part have pardoned Condorcet if he had striven to invent ever so fanciful origins for opinions and belief in his solicitude for the credit of humanity. As it is, he distorts the history of religion only to humanity’s discredit. ”

“ The truth is that, working in such natures as Condorcet’s, the principles of the eighteenth century, its homage to reason and rational methods, its exaltation of the happiness of men, not excluding their material wellbeing, into the highest place, its passion for justice and law, its large illumination, all engendered a fervour as truly religious as that of Catholicism or of Calvinism at their best, while its sentiment was infinitely less interested and personal. ”

“ Apart from the misreading of history in explaining religion by the folly of the many and the frauds of a few, Condorcet’s interpretation involved the profoundest infidelity to his own doctrine of the intrinsic purity and exaltation of human nature. This doctrine ought in all reason to have led him to look for the secret of the popular acceptance of beliefs that to him seemed most outrageous, in some pos- 237 -sibly finer side which they might possess for others, appealing not to the lower but to the higher qualities of a nature with instincts of perfection. ”

“ A free people and a national assembly are not made to admire anybody.’ The electors of the department of the Aisne had unconsciously sent two typical revolutionists: the man of intellectual ideas, and the man of passion heated as in the pit. In their persons the Encyclopædia and the Guillotine met. Condorcet, who had been extreme in the Legislative, but found himself a moderate in the Convention, gave wise counsel as to the true policy towards the new members: ‘Better try to moderate them than quarrel.’ But in this case, not even in their ruin, were fire and water reconciled. ”

“ You hand over debtors to the greed or spite of their creditors; our laws, wiser and more humane, know how to respect poverty and misfortune. Judge between us and you, and see to which of the two peoples the reproach of inhumanity may be addressed with most justice.”’ [35] This was the eve of- 204 - the Terror. Well may Comte distinguish Condorcet as the one philosopher who pursued in the midst of the tempest his regenerating meditations.
But let us banish the notion that the history of the Convention is only the history of the guillotine. ”

“ Though many of these precepts designed to guide the electors in their choice of men are sagacious and admirable, they smack strongly of that absolute and abstract spirit which can never become powerful in politics without danger. It is certain that in the spring of ’89, Condorcet held hereditary monarchy to be most suitable to ‘the wealth, the population, the extent of France, and to the political system of Europe.’ [24] Yet the reasons which he gives for thinking this- 191 - are not very cogent, and he can hardly have felt them to be so. ”

“ He has sufficient intelligence to recognise what is useful to him as well as what is harmful to him. Once you admit these axioms, and you can in your investigations into the best legislation, arrive, with the help of reflection and good intentions, at conclusions as well founded, as exact, as incontrovertible as those derived from a mathematical demonstration. Thus Condorcet undertook to construct deductively all precepts of healthy morality by starting from the truth that man is a sentient and reasonable being. ”

“ It was expected from the perpetual secretary that he should compose a eulogy upon the occasion of his death, and Condorcet was warned by friends, who seldom reflect that a man above the common quality owes something more to himself than mere prudence, not to irritate the powerful minister by a slight upon his relation. ”

“ Madame de Staël continued the thought of Condorcet, thus forming a link between him and Saint-Simon and Comte. The influence of the Traditionalists and the general current of thought and literature known as Romanticism, helped also to solve a difficulty which distinguishes Condorcet from Comte. This difficulty lay in the eighteenth-century attitude to the Middle Ages, which Condorcet had accepted, and which seriously damaged his thesis of general progress, for in the eighteenth century the Middle Ages were looked upon as a black, dark regress, for which no thinker had a good word to say. ”

“ One seeks in vain in Condorcet’s sketch for any account of the natural history of western morals, or for any sign of consciousness on his part that the difference in ethical discipline and feeling between the most ferocious of primitive tribes and the most enlightened eighteenth-century Frenchmen, was a result of evolution that needed historical explanation, quite as much as the difference between the astrolatry of one age and the astronomy of another. ”

“ 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 {Pg 176} others, rather than developing novel ideas of his own. ”

“ When Condorcet described the Tenth Epoch in the long development of human progress, he was sure not only that fulness of light and perfection of happiness would come to the sons of men, but that they were coming with all speed. ”