(Jean-Antoine Nicolas Caritat de), was born at Ribemont in Picardy, the 17th of September 1743, of a noble and very ancient family. At the age of 15 he was sent to study philosophy at the college of Navarre, and had the good fortune to fall into the hands of an able professor, who has since distinguished himself by his geometrical works. The Condorcet-young Condorcet had no relish for the busyness of the first course, for the quibbles of ontology and pneumatology, and all the wretched appendages of school metaphysics; But in the following year, his studies, being directed to the mathematical and physical sciences, were entirely congenial to his taste; and though there were upwards of 120 scholars, he distinguished himself above them all. At Easter he held a public thesis, at which Clairaut, D'Alembert, and Fontaine, assisted. He now returned home, but continued to cultivate geometry. To enjoy more opportunities of improvement, he removed in 1762 to Paris; where he attended the chemical course of Macquer and Beaumé, and frequented the literary societies which D'Alembert had formed at the house of Mademoiselle de Lepinaste.

In 1765, when only 22 years old, he published a work on the Integral Calculus, which discovered vast extent and originality of views. Condorcet was already numbered with the foremost mathematicians in Europe. "There was not (says La Lande) above ten of that class; one at Petersburg, one at Berlin, one at Basle, one at Milan, and five or six at Paris; England, which had set such an illustrious example, no longer produced a single geometer that could rank with the former." It is mortifying to us to confess that this remark is but too much founded in truth. We doubt not but there are in Great Britain at present mathematicians equal in profundity and address to any who have existed since the illustrious Newton; but these men are not known to the learned of Europe, because they keep their science to themselves. They have no encouragement, from the taste of the nation, to publish any thing in those higher departments of geometry which have so long occupied the attention of the mathematicians on the continent.

In 1767 Condorcet published his solution of the problem of three bodies; and in the following year, the first part of his Analytical Essays; in which he entered very profoundly into those arduous questions. He was received into the academy on the 8th of March 1769; and from that time till 1773 he enriched their annual volumes with memoirs on infinite series, on partial and finite differences, on equations of condition, and on other objects of importance in the higher calculus. It must be regretted, that he indulged speculation perhaps to excess; the methods that he proposes for integration are sometimes of a nature so extremely general, as to refuse to be accommodated to practice. Prosecuting those researches for several years longer, he composed an ample Treatise on the Integral Calculus, in five parts, comprising the doctrines and their application. It was afterwards copied out for the press in 1785 by Keralio, formerly governor to the Infant of Parma. Only 128 pages were printed; but the manuscript still exists; as does that of an elementary Treatise on Arithmetic. It is to be hoped that both of these will yet be given to the public.

His attention was not, however, entirely absorbed in those recondite studies. He published about this time an anonymous pamphlet, intitled a Letter to a Theologian; in which he replied with keen satire to the attacks made by the author of the Three Centuries of Literature against the philosophical sect. "But (says joins the prudent La Lande) he pushed the matter somewhat Condorcet somewhat too far; for, admitting the justness of his system, it was more prudent to confine within the circle of the initiated those truths which are dangerous for the multitude, who cannot replace by sound principles what they would lose of fear, of consolation, and of hope." Condorcet was now leagued with the atheists; and La Lande, who wishes well to the same sect, censures not his principles, but only regrets his rashness. He was indeed, as Mr. Burke observed, a fanatic atheist and furious democratic republican.

On the 10th of June 1773 he was made secretary of the academy of sciences; and that important trust he discharged through the rest of his life with great ability and uncommon reputation. The duties of his office required him to write the lives of the deceased academicians, which he performed with diligence, judgment, and universal applause: And what species of composition is capable of being rendered so extensively useful as biography? In the most instructive form it conveys instruction; and, bestowing vitality and action on the rules of conduct and on the lessons of virtue, it fires the breast with the noblest emulation. The life of a philosopher must also include a portion of the history of science. We there trace the successive steps which led to discoveries, and learn to estimate the value of those acquisitions by the efforts that were made, and the obstacles that were surmounted. The literati of France have long excelled in the composition of Eloges; but those of Condorcet are of a very superior cast. Replete with information and genuine science, they maintain a dignified impartiality, and display vigour of imagination, with boldness and energy of style. The intrepidity (say his Panegyrics) with which he uttered the sentiments of truth and of freedom, could not have been expected from the mouth of an academician under an absolute monarchy. It could not, indeed, till the present eventful age, have been expected under any government whatever; for what he called the sentiments of truth were the dogmas of debasing irreligion, which would not have been permitted in the far-famed republics of Greece and Rome; and what he dignified with the appellation of the principles of freedom, experience has shown to have been the immediate source of anarchy, out of which has sprung a despotism, the heaviest under which any people have groaned since the creation of the world.

Besides the eloges, which properly belonged to his province, Condorcet published in a separate volume the lives of those favours, who, having died before the renewal of the academy in 1699, did not fall in with the plan of Fontenelle. The suppression of the history of the academy, or the regular abstracts of the printed memoirs, which he effected in 1783, afforded him more leisure. In 1787 appeared, yet without a name, his account of Turgot; an ineffable piece, which, in developing the beneficial views of a virtuous and enlightened minister, exhibits the neatest abstract of the principles of political economy that is extant in any language. Nearly about the same time, he composed that elegant life which is prefixed to the splendid edition of the works of Voltaire. Condorcet had been elected member of the academic Francaise in 1782; and his reputation as a fine writer was so well established, that bookellers were solicitous to cover their undertakings with the sanction of his name. He promised an additional volume to the translation of Euler's Letters to a German Prince; but it was never finished. The part which was printed, amounting to only 112 pages, contains the elements of the calculation of probabilities, and a curious plan of a dictionary, in which objects should be arranged by their qualities merely. A new translation of Smith's celebrated Wealth of Nations was likewise announced with the notes of Condorcet, though he was never heartily engaged about it. On equally flight grounds, his name was lent to the Bibliothèque de l'Homme Public; and the facility of his temper led him but too often, at this period, to such digressions as arts. Indeed disingenuous arts seem to be the natural offspring of the present philosophy of France; for the tricks played by Voltaire to his bookellers, which are well known, would in this country have sunk into disgrace the greatest genius that ever lived; and the attempt of Diderot to cheat the late empress of Russia, by selling to her, at an immense price, a library, which he pretended to be one of the most valuable in Europe, when he possessed not perhaps one hundred volumes, was disingenuity ingrained on impudence. But to return from this short digression.

These literary pursuits did not entirely seduce Condorcet from more profound studies. At the instigation of Turgot, he sought to apply analysis to questions of politics and morality. His first Memoir on Probabilities was read to the academy in 1781. He afterward extended his researches to the consideration of elections, sales, and successions; and digesting these remarks and calculations into a systematic shape, he published in 1785 a quarto volume, containing the elements of a new and important science.

It is easy to conceive the interest that Condorcet would take in the success of the revolution. Aware of the prodigious influence of newspapers, he contributed largely to the Journal de Paris, and the Chroniques, which acquired great celebrity from the elegance of his pen; and not very long before his death, he began, in concert with the famous Sieyès, a journal of Social Instruction. In 1791 he wrote a pamphlet in favour of republican government, which procured him a seat in the Legislative Assembly, and the academy permitted him still to retain the office of secretary. He drew up a manifesto to the subject of the war menaced by the crowned heads; and a very ample report on public instruction, which has in part been lately adopted by the councils of France. He was an early member of the Jacobin club, that active instrument of the revolution; but perceiving the progressive ferocity of its measures, he forsook it in March 1792.

On the 13th of August, when the king was conducted to the temple, Condorcet was named by the Assembly to draw up a justification memorial addressed to all Europe. At the dissolution of that Assembly, he was chosen deputy to the National Convention, and for some time acted a distinguished part in its deliberations. He was at the head of the committee appointed to prepare the plan of a republican constitution. But, in the meanwhile, the faction of the Mountain, with a peculiar energy of character, was rapidly acquiring strength. The report of the committee was coldly received—was even treated with contempt; and, on the 31st of May 1793, Robespierre completely triumphed. The Brissotins were arrested, outlawed, dispersed; and Condorcet, having voted against the death of the king, was involved CON

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and involved in the proscription. For some months he obtained an asylum at Paris in the house of a woman, who was ignorant of his person, but commiserated his lot. Nothing, however, could elude the vigilance of the tyrant. Menaces of a strict domiciliary visit compelled him at last, in March 1794, to quit his concealment. He escaped the barriers, and passed the first night in the plain of Montrouge. On the next morning, he repaired to the house of an old friend at Pontenai, who most unfortunately had gone to Paris, and was not expected to return for two days. In this deplorable state of suspense did Condorcet pass one night in a quarry, and another under a tree in the fields. On the third day he happened to meet his friend; but the meeting was short and unsatisfactory. After a hasty refreshment, it was agreed that he should depart. In the meanwhile, to return again at night after all the servants were retired to rest. He was therefore obliged to wander about the neighbourhood of Clamart. Exhausted with hunger and fatigue, and his feet terribly bruised, nature could hold out no longer. He entered an alehouse, where his long beard and haggard looks exposed him to suspicion. A member of the revolutionary committee of Clamart demanded his passport, led him away to the committee, and thence transferred him to the district of Bourg-la-Reine. Having arrived too late for interrogation, he was flung up in prison under the name of Pierre Simon, with the intention of being sent to Paris. On the 28th of March he was found dead.

Thus miserably perished a most able philosopher, and one of the finest writers of those that have adorned the present century. His private character is described by La Lande as easy, quiet, kind, and obliging; but his behaviour to Diderot when dying, disfavouring instead of the milk of human kindness, the malignity of a fiend. Neither his conversation nor his external deportment bespoke the fire of his genius. D'Alembert used to compare him to a volcano covered with snow. He had a latent weakness, however, of constitution, which often made him the dupe of men altogether unworthy of his regard.

It was during the period of his concealment at Paris, uncertain of a day's existence, that he wrote his Sketch of the Progress of the Human Mind; a production which undoubtedly displays genius, though it contains some of the most extravagant paradoxes that ever fell from the pen of a philosopher. Among other wonderful things, the author inculcates the possibility, if not the probability, that the nature of man may be improved to absolute perfection in body and mind; and his existence in this world prolonged to immortality. So firmly does he seem to have been persuaded of the truth of this unphilosophical opinion, that he set himself seriously to consider how men should conduct themselves when the population should become too great for the quantity of food which the earth can produce; and the only way which he could find for counteracting this evil was, to check population by promiscuous cohabitation and other practices, with an account of which we will not fully our pages. Yet we are told by La Lande, that this sketch is "only the outline of a great work, which, had the author lived to complete it, would have been considered as a monument erected to the honour of human nature!!!" La Lande, indeed, speaks of the author in terms of high respect; and his abilities are certainly unquestionable; but what shall we think of the morals of that man, who first pursued with malicious reports, and afterwards hired ruffians to assassinate*, the old Duke of Rochefoucauld, in whose house he had been brought up; by whom he had been treated as a son; and at whose solicitation Turgot created for him a lucrative office; and by the power of the court raised him to all his eminence? There is a living English writer, who has laboured hard to prove that gratitude is a crime. Condorcet must surely have held the same opinion; and therefore could not blame those low born tyrants who put him to death by what we would call an unjust sentence; for it was in some degree to his writings that those tyrants were indebted for their power.

About the end of the year 1786, Condorcet married Marie Louise Sophie de Grouchy, whose youth, wit, and beauty, were less attractive in the eyes of a philosopher than the tender and courageous anxiety with which she watched the couch, and alleviated the sufferings, of the son of the president du Paty, who had been bitten by a mad dog. This union, however, we are told, was fatal to his repose; it tempted him into the dangerous road of ambition; and the idea of providing for a wife and daughter induced him to seek for offices which once he would have despised.