CONDORCET, JEAN ANTOINF. NICOLAS DE CARI TAT, Mattuots DE, a celebrated mathematici• and phi losopher, was descended of an ancient and noble iamily, and was born at Ribemont in Picarcly, on the 17th of September 1743. He received 1 is educt.tion at the College of Navarre, where he was distinguished among his fellow students for his ardour in the acquisition of knowledge, and for his extreme partiality to mathema tical and physical pursuits. In the year 1765, when he was in the 22d year of his age, he published his Traite du Calcul Integral, in which he proposed to give a ge neral method of determining the finite integral of a given differential equation, either for differences infinitely small or for finite differences. This work, which is noticed in the History of the Academy for 1765, (p. 54.) had the honour of being praised by D'Alembert and Bossut, who were employed by the Academy to examine it. They stated that the greater part of the methods were invented by Condorcet; that it exhibited a degree of knowledge rarely to be met with at so early an age ; and that it afforded a presage of talents which the approba tion of the Academy could not fail to excite. This work was followed by his Essais d'Analyse, in four parts, the first of which was published in 1765, the second in 1767, and the third in 1768. This work relates principally to the system of the world, and to the solution of the pro blem of three bodies ; but these subjects, as La Lamle has already remarked, are treated with a generality which is insufficient for astronomy. On the 8th March, 1769, he was admitted into the Academy of Sciences as joint mechanician, and as associate on the 22d Decem her 1770; and in this situation he formed a friendship with D'Alembert which lasted during his life. He was appointed, along with D'Alembert and Bossut, to assist the celebrated Turgot in his financial calculations ; and about the same time he wrote, under the title of Lcttres du Laboureu•, a reply to Necker's essay on the corn laws, entitled De la Legislation et du Commerce des Grains, and he published an anonymous defence of the political sect to which he had attached himself. This last work was entitled Lcttres d'un Theologien a sons fils, and was in tended as an answer to the Abbe Sabbatie•'s Dictionnaire des Trois siecles de notre Literature. It contains a great deal of unmanly and illiberal abuse, directed against re ligion and its ministers ; and, as if even this was not a sufficient display of his opinions, he afterwards publish ed his Commentaire des Pensees de Pascal, which is fill ed with the principles of the most determined atheism.
In 1773 he published, at Paris, the Eloges des Aca demiciens de l'Academie Royale des Sciences mort depuis 1666 jusqu'en 1699. This work contains the lives of Huygens, Picard, and Roemer, who were not included in the Eloges either of Fontenelle or D'Alembert, and if we believe La Lamle, was written at a time when he was ambitious of the secretaryship to the Academy of Sciences, and with the view of sheaving that he was qualified for that important office. Influenced probably by the genius displayed in these eloges, as well as by the high opinion entertained of him by D'Alembert, the Academy appointed him adjunct secretary, with the re version of that office, on the 10th of March 1773.
A vacancy having occurred in the French Academy by the death of M. Saurin, in 1782, Condo•cet was pro posed as a candidate by his friend D'Alembert, while M. Bailly, the celebrated author of the History of Astrono my, was supported with all the influence of the Count de Buffon. Bailly had been vanquished, at the last election, by M. Chamfort, by only three or four votes, and was therefore supposed to have the best chance of succeed ing Saurin. D'Alembert, however, employed all his ad dress and activity in the cause of his friend, and he at last succeeded in securing Condo•cet's election by the single vote of M. de Tressan, at a meeting consisting of 31 members. This academician, who owed his place in the Academy to Buffon, had promissed his vote both to Bailly and Condorcet, but D'Alembert, who was more acquainted with human character than Buffon, had the precaution of obtaining a written promise from M. de Tressan, and of thus securing a vote which might other wise have decided the election of Bailly. The discourse which Condorcet delivered to the Academy at his admis sion, does not appear to have answered the high expec tations of his friends. It related principally to the rapid progress of knowledge during the 16th century, and to the doctrine of the infinite perfectibility of the human mind, an opinion which seems to have decayed with the revolutionary spirit in which it had its origin, and which could be maintained only by men who were intoxicated with a false and extravagant estimate of their own pow ers.