United States or Japan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He had his earnestness and constancy, but had not the resounding and energetic tone which made his own soul and feelings felt by another. The club of electors of Paris, who met at La Sainte Chapelle, elected Condorcet to the chamber. The same club returned Danton. Danton, whom the Revolution had found an obscure barrister at the Châtelet, had increased with it in influence.
The events of the Revolution quenched in him as little as in Condorcet the sanguine confidence that it was the opening of a new era for science and art, and thereby for the general Progress of man. He imagined that it would terminate oppression, and was as enthusiastic for it as he and Condorcet had been for the Revolution ten years before.
Madame de Stäel and the constitutional party sought the aid of the Girondists. Condorcet, was the mediator between the two parties. Madame de Condorcet, an exceedingly lovely woman, united with Madame de Stäel in enthusiasm for the young minister. The one lent him the brilliancy of her genius, the other the influence of her beauty.
As Condorcet put it, and he drew inspiration partly from the intellectual school of Voltaire, and partly from the social school of Rousseau, all institutions ought to have for their aim the physical, intellectual, and moral amelioration of the poorest and most numerous class. This is the People.
The Girondists, comprehending the more respectable of the republicans, and wishing to found the state on the model of antiquity, formed a second party, among whom were numbered the ablest men in the assembly. Brissot, Vergniaud, Condorcet, Guadet, and Isnard, were among the leading members.
Necker still received the world that was wont to assemble in the great salons, Mme. de Condorcet presided over a rival coterie, and there were numerous small and intimate circles; but the element of politics was beginning to intrude, and with it a degree of heat which disturbed the usual harmony.
They all announced a new era of development as a necessary sequel of the past, an inevitable and desirable stage in the march of humanity, and delineated its features. Comte was the successor of Saint-Simon, as Saint-Simon himself was the successor of Condorcet. Fourier stands quite apart. He claimed that he broke entirely new ground, and acknowledged no masters.
This military man had not so good nerves as the peaceable gentlemen of the Old Jewry. See Mons. Mounier's narrative of these transactions: a man also of honor and virtue and talents, and therefore a fugitive. He has since been obliged to live in exile, though one of the firmest assertors of liberty. See the fate of Bailly and Condorcet, supposed to be here particularly alluded to.
In over a hundred pamphlets during the four years of his life as a Revolutionist, Condorcet disseminates his ideas fortnightly pamphlets, many of them even now worth reading, lighting up now this, now that aspect of his faith kingship, slavery, the destiny of man, two Houses, assignats, education of the people, finance, the rights of man, economics, free trade, the rights of women, the Progress of the Human Mind.
Perhaps the gaoler, whose brutal carelessness terminated the days of Condorcet, extinguished his own humanity in the torrent of that revolution of which Condorcet himself was one of the authors; and perhaps the death of a sovereign, whom Condorcet assisted in bringing to the scaffold, might have been this man's first lesson in cruelty, and have taught him to set little value on the lives of the rest of mankind.
Word Of The Day