t towards Bourg-la-Reine; he fainted by the
way, was set on a horse offered in pity by a passing peasant, and, at
the journey's end, was cast into a cold damp cell. Next morning he was
found dead on the floor. Whether he had died from suffering and
exhaustion, from apoplexy or from poison, is an undetermined question.

Condorcet was undoubtedly a most sincere, generous and noble-minded man.
He was eager in the pursuit of truth, ardent in his love of human good,
and ever ready to undertake labour or encounter danger on behalf of the
philanthropic plans which his fertile mind contrived and his benevolent
heart inspired. It was thus that he worked for the suppression of
slavery, for the rehabilitation of the chevalier de La Barre, and in
defence of Lally-Tollendal. He lived at a time when calumny was rife,
and various slanders were circulated regarding him, but fortunately the
slightest examination proves them to have been inexcusable fabrications.
That while openly opposing royalty he was secretly soliciting the office
of tutor to the Dauphin; that he was accessory to the murder of the duc
de la Rochefoucauld; or that he sanctioned the burning of the literary
treasures of the learned congregations, are stories which can be shown
to be utterly untrue.

His philosophical fame is chiefly associated with the _Esquisse ...
des'progres_ mentioned above. With the vision of the guillotine before
him, with confusion and violence around him, he comforted himself by
trying to demonstrate that the evils of life had arisen from a
conspiracy of priests and rulers against their fellows, and from the bad
laws and institutions which they had succeeded in creating, but that the
human race would finally conquer its enemies and free itself of its
evils. His fundamental idea is that of a human perfectibility which has
manifested itself in continuous progress in the past, and must lead to
indefinite progress in the future. He represents man as starting from
the lowest stage of barbarism, with no superiority over the other
animals save that of bodily organization, and as advancing
uninterruptedly, at a more or less rapid rate, in the path of
enlightenment, virtue and happiness. The stages which the human race has
already gone through, or, in other words, the great epochs of history,
are regarded as nine in number. The first three can confessedly be
described only conjecturally from general observations as to the
development of the human facult