DUPUIS, CHARLES FRANÇOIS, an eminent French writer, and member of the Institute, was born of poor parents at Tryé-Château, between Gisors and Chaumont, Oct. 26, 1742. His father, who was a teacher, instructed him in mathematics and land-surveying. The Duke de la Rochefoucault, who accidentally became acquainted with young Dupuis, took him under his protection, and gave him a bursary in the College of Harcourt.
Dupuis made such rapid progress in his studies, that at the age of twenty-four he was appointed professor of rhetoric at the college of Lisieux. In his hours of leisure he applied himself to the study of the law, and in 1770 was admitted an advocate before parliament. He was charged by the rector of the university with the task of delivering the customary discourse at the distribution of prizes; and he was also employed in the name of the university to compose the funeral oration of the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. These two works having been printed, they were admired on account of their elegant Latinity, and laid the foundation of the author's fame as a writer.
The mathematics having been the object of his early studies, he now devoted his more serious attention to that science; and for some years he attended the astronomical lectures of Lalande, with whom he formed an intimate friendship. In 1778 he constructed a telegraph on the principle suggested by Amontons; and employed it in keeping up a correspondence with his friend M. Fortin in the neighbouring village of Bagnex, until the Revolution rendered it necessary that he should destroy his machine to avoid the danger of suspicion.
Much about the same time, Dupuis formed his ingenious theory with respect to the origin of the Greek months. In the course of his investigations upon this subject, he composed a long memoir on the constellations, in which he endeavoured to account for the dissimilarity of the groups of stars in the heavens with their representations even on the most ancient planispheres, by supposing that the zodiac was, for the people who invented it, a sort of calendar at once astronomical and rural. It seemed only necessary, therefore, to discover the climate and the period in which the constellation of Capricorn must have arisen with the sun on the day of the summer solstice, and the vernal equinox must have occurred under Libra. It appeared to Dupuis that this climate was Egypt, and that the perfect correspondence between the signs and their significations had existed in that country for a period of between fifteen and sixteen thousand years before the present time; that it had existed only there; and that this harmony had been disturbed by the effect of the precession of the equinoxes. He therefore ascribed the invention of the signs of the zodiac to the people who then inhabited Upper Egypt or Ethiopia. This was the basis on which Dupuis established his mythological system, and endeavoured to explain the curious subject of fabulous history, and the whole system of the theogony and theology of the ancients.
Persuaded of the importance of his discoveries, which, however, were by no means entirely original, Dupuis published several detached parts of his system in the Journal
des Savans for the months of June, October, and December 1777, and of February 1781. These he afterwards collected and published, first in Lalande's Astronomy, and then in a separate volume in 4to, 1781, under the title of Mémoire sur l'Origine des Constellations, et sur l'Explication de la Fable par l'Astronomie. The theory propounded in this memoir was refuted by M. Bailly, in the fifth volume of his History of Astronomy; but, at the same time, with a just acknowledgment of the erudition and ingenuity exhibited by the author.
Condorcet proposed Dupuis to Frederick the Great of Prussia as a fit person to succeed Thiébaut in the professorship of literature at Berlin; and Dupuis had accepted the invitation, when the death of the king put an end to the engagement. The chair of humanity in the college of France having at the same time become vacant by the death of M. Bejot, it was conferred on Dupuis; and in 1788 he became a member of the Academy of Inscriptions. He now resigned his professorship at Lisieux, and was appointed by the administrators of the department of Paris one of the four commissioners of public instruction.
At the commencement of the revolutionary troubles Dupuis sought an asylum at Evreux; and having been chosen a member of the national convention by the department of the Seine-et-Oise, he distinguished himself by the moderation of his speeches and public conduct. In the third year of the republic he was elected secretary to the assembly, and in the fourth he was chosen a member of the council of Five Hundred. After the memorable 18th Brumaire he was elected by the department of Seine-et-Oise a member of the legislative body, of which he became the president. He was afterwards proposed as a candidate for the senate; and here terminated his political career.
In 1794 he published his large work, entitled Origine de tous les Cultes, ou la Religion Universelle, 3 vols. 4to, with an atlas, or 12 vols. 12mo. This work made a considerable sensation at first; it gave umbrage to many, was attacked and defended with warmth, at length ceased to be read, and fell into utter neglect. In 1798 he published an abridgment of this work in one volume 8vo, which met with no better success. Another abridgment of the same work, executed upon a much more methodical plan, was published by M. de Tracy. The other works of Dupuis consist of two memoirs on the Pelasgi, inserted in the Memoirs of the Institute; a memoir On the Zodiac of Tentyra, published in the Revue Philosophique for May 1806; and a Mémoire Explicatif du Zodiac Chronologique et Mythologique published the same year, in one volume 4to. It was from the perusal of the poem of Nonnus, which he once thought of translating into French, and of which a fragment was printed in the Nouvel Almanach des Muses for 1805, that Dupuis caught the first idea of his astronomical system.
Dupuis died at Is-sur-Til, Sept. 29, 1809, leaving behind him several manuscripts on subjects connected with the works which he had published during his life. He was a member of the Legion of Honour; and his character was that of an honest man and a paradoxical writer. He was sprung from poor parents, and never acquired any fortune. M. Dacier, secretary to the third class of the Institute, delivered his Eloge; and an historical account of his life and writings was published by his widow. (See also Biographie Universelle.)