Day 14 -- Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Human Mind (1793)

The MARQUIS de CONDORCET, (1743-1794), was a French mathematician, economist, publicist, and philosopher, who represented the Enlghtenment at its most optimistic.  Convinced that humanity was on the verge of a new era, in which rationality would over come religious superstition and bring equality and prosperity, he was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution.  When the Revolution became its radical, his aristocratic background made him a target for the Reign of Terror, and he pursued by the police.  In hiding he wrote a history of the world, which ended with a vision of the future in which all humanity embraced Reason, gave up religion and what he considered to be superstitious customs and joined to create a utopia.  He finally died when captured, but his history became one of the sources for 19th century French intellectuals who believed in scientific progress.

[NB – As a practitioner of 18th century rhetoric, Condorcet liked long sentences and rhetorical questions.  But there is no question that he thought that the Enlightenment would lead to a new era of peace, prosperity, and progress for all humanity.]

How consoling for the philosopher who laments the errors, the crimes, the injustices which still pollute the earth and of which he is often the victim is this view of the human race, emancipated from its shackles, released from the empire of fate and from that of the enemies of its progress, advancing with a firm and sure step along the path of truth, virtue and happiness!  It is the contemplation of this prospect that rewards him for all his efforts to assist the progress of reason and the defense of liberty. . . . Such contemplation is for him an asylum, in which the memory of his persecutors cannot pursue him; there he lives in thought with man restored to his natural rights and dignity . . . .

Our hope for the future condition of the human race can be subsumed under three important heads: the abolition of inequality among nations, the progress of equality within each nation, and the true perfection of mankind.  Will all nations one day attain that state of civilization which the most enlightened, the freest, and the least burdened by prejudices, such as the French and the Anglo-Americans, have attained already?  Will the vast gulf that separates these peoples from the slavery of nations under the rule of monarchs, from the barbarism of African tribes, from the ignorance of savages, little by little disappear?

Is there on the face of the earth a nation whose inhabitants have been debarred by nature herself from the enjoyment of freedom and the exercise of reason?

Are those differences which have hitherto been seen in every civilized country in respect of the enlightenment, the resources, and the wealth enjoyed by the different classes into which it is divided, is that inequality between men which was aggravated or perhaps produced by the earliest progress of society, are these part of civilization itself, or are they due to the present imperfections of the social art? Will they necessarily decrease and ultimately make way for a real equality, the final end of the social art, in which even the effects of the natural differences between men will be mitigated and the only kind of inequality to persist will be that which is in the interests of all and which favours the progress of civilization, of education, and of industry, without entailing either poverty, humiliation, or dependence? In other words, will men approach a condition in which everyone will have the knowledge necessary to conduct himself in the ordinary affairs of life, according to the light of his own reason, to preserve his mind free from prejudice, to understand his rights and to exercise them in accordance with his conscience and his creed; in which everyone will become able, through the development of his faculties, to find the means of providing for his needs; and in which at last misery and folly will be the exception, and no longer the habitual lot of a section of society?

Is the human race to better itself, either by discoveries in the sciences and the arts, and so in the means to individual welfare and general prosperity; or by progress in the principles of conduct or practical morality; or by a true perfection of the intellectual, moral, or physical faculties of man, an improvement which may result from a perfection either of the instruments used to heighten the intensity of these faculties and to direct their use or of the natural constitution of man?

In answering these three questions we shall find in the experience of the past, in the observation of the progress that the sciences and civilization have already made, in the analysis of the progress of the human mind and of the development of its faculties, the strongest reason for believing that nature has set no limit to the realization of our hopes .

If we glance at the state of the world today we see first of all that in Europe the principles of the French constitution are already those of all enlightened men. We see them too widely propagated, too seriously professed, for priests and despots to prevent their gradual penetration even into the hovels of the slaves; there they will soon awaken in these slaves the remnants of their common sense and inspire them with that smouldering indignation which not even constant humiliation and fear can smother in the soul of the oppressed. . . .

Can we doubt that either common sense or the senseless discords of European nations will add to the effects of the slow but inexorable progress of their colonies, and will soon bring about the independence of the New World.? And then will not the European population in these colonies. spreading rapidly over that enormous land, either civilize or peacefully remove the savage nations who still inhabit vast tracts of its land ? . . .

These vast lands are inhabited partly by large tribes who need only assistance from us to become civilized, who wait only to find brothers amongst the European nations to become their friends and pupils; partly by races oppressed by sacred despots or dull-witted conquerors, and who for so many centuries have cried out to be liberated . . .

The time will therefore come when the sun will shine only on free men who know no other master but their reason ; when tyrants and slaves, priests and their stupid or hypocritical instruments will exist only in works of history and on the stage . . .