MARAT, JEAN PAUL (1743-1793), French revolutionary leader, son of Jean Paul Marat, a designer of Cagliari in Sar dinia, and Louise Cabrol of Geneva, was born at Boudry, Neu chatel, on May 24, 1743. On his mother's death in 1759 Marat set out on his travels, and studied medicine for two years at Bordeaux, whence he moved to Paris, where he made use of his knowledge of optics and electricity to subdue an obstinate disease of the eyes. After some years in Paris he went to Holland, and then to London, where he practised medicine. In 1773 he published a Philosophical Essay on Man. The book directly attacks Helvetius, who had in his De l'esprit declared a knowledge of science unnecessary for a philosopher: Marat declares that physiology alone can solve the problems of the connection between soul and body, and proposes the existence of a nervous fluid as the true solution. In 1774 he published The Chains of Slavery, which was intended to influence constituencies to return popular members, and reject the king's friends. In '775 he published in London his Essay on Gleets, and in Amsterdam a French translation of the first two volumes of his Essay on Man. In this year he visited Edinburgh, and was made an M.D. of St. Andrews. On his return to London he published an Enquiry into the Nature, Cause, and Cure of a Singular Disease of the Eyes, with a dedication to the Royal Society. In the same year there appeared the third volume of the French edition of the Philosophical Essay on Man, which exasperated Voltaire, whose at tack made the young author more conspicuous. His fame as a doctor was now great, and on June 24, 1777, the comte d'Artois, afterwards Charles X. of France, made him physician to his guards with 2,000 livres a year and allowances.
Marat soon had an aristocratic practice. He presented memoirs on heat, light and electricity to the Academie des Sciences, but the academicians were horrified at his temerity in differing from Newton and would not receive him. In 1780 he had published at Neuchatel a Plan de legislation criminelle, founded on the prin ciples of Beccaria. In April 1786 he resigned his court appoint ment. The results of his leisure were in 1787 a new translation of Newton's Optics, and in 1788 his Memoires academiques, ou nouvelles decouvertes sur la lumiere.
In the notoriety of the political life which was now to begin, his scientific and philosophical knowledge was to be forgotten, the high position he had given up denied, and he himself scoffed at as an ignorant charlatan, who had sold quack medicines about the streets of Paris, and been glad to earn a few sous in the stables of the comte d'Artois. In i788 the elections for the States general were the cause of a flood of pamphlets, of which Marat's Offrande a la patrie dwelt on much the same points as the famous brochure of the Abbe Sieyes : Qu'est-ce que le tiers etat? In June 1789 he published a supplement to his 0 ffrande, followed in July by La constitution, in which he embodies his idea of a constitution for France, and in September by his Tableau des vices de la con stitution d'Angleterre, which he presented to the Assembly. The
latter alone deserves remark. The Assembly was at this time full of anglomaniacs, who desired to establish in France a constitution similar to that of England. Marat had seen that England was at this time being ruled by an oligarchy using the forms of liberty, which, while pretending to represent the country, was really being gradually mastered by the royal power. His heart was now all in politics; and he decided to start a paper. At first appeared a single number of the Moniteur patriote, followed on Sept. i2 by the first number of the Publiciste parisien, which on Sept. 16 took the title of L'Ami du peuple and which he edited, with some interruptions, until Sept. 21, 1792.
The life of Marat now becomes part of the history of the French Revolution. From the beginning to the end he stood alone. He was never attached to any party ; the tone of his mind was to suspect whoever was in power. About his paper, the incarnation of himself, the first thing to be said is that the man always meant what he said ; no poverty, no misery or persecution, could keep him quiet; he was perpetually crying, "Nous sommes trahis." Whoever suspected any one had only to denounce him to the Ami du peuple, and the denounced was never let alone till he was proved innocent or guilty. Marat began by attacking the most powerful bodies in Paris—the Constituent Assembly, the minis ters, the corps municipal, and the court of the Chatelet. De nounced and arrested, he was imprisoned from Oct. 8 to Nov. 5, 1789. A second time, owing to his violent campaign against La fayette, he narrowly escaped arrest and had to flee to London ( Jan. 179o). There he wrote his Denonciation contre Necker, and in May dared to return to Paris and continue the Ami du peuple. He was embittered by persecution, and continued his vehement attacks against all in power, and at last, after the day of the Champs du Mars (July 17, 1790, against the king himself. All this time he was in hiding in cellars and sewers, where he was attacked by a horrible skin disease, tended only by the woman Simonne Evrard, who remained true to him. The end of the Constituent Assembly he heard of with joy and with bright hopes for the future, soon dashed by the behaviour of the Legisla tive Assembly. When almost despairing, in December 179r, he fled once more to London, where he wrote his Ecole du citoyen. In April 1792, summoned again by the Cordeliers' Club, he returned to Paris, and published No. 627 of the Ami.