CONDORCET: A BIOGRAPHY. 197 



The class of the envious, always numerous and active, and ready to 

 create disturbance, received through the mouth of Fontenelle a lesson 

 of good sense and of wisdom, from which, unfortunately, they profited 

 little. The first edition of Voltaire's Age of Louis XIV was about to 

 ap[)ear. This was too good an occasion to irritate two great men against 

 each other to be neglected. "How am I treated in this work?" asked 

 Fontenelle. lie was answered : " Voltaire commences by declaring that 

 you are the only living person for whom he would make exception of the 

 rule he had made for himself to speak only of the dead.-' "Stop," said 

 tbe secretary of the Academy, " I do not wish to hear more. With any- 

 thing Voltaire may add to that I must be content." Notwithstanding 

 some criticism, Buffon, the immortal author of the Sistoire Natiirellc, 

 would surely have been equally satisfied could he have heard the follow- 

 ing tribute Condorcet renders to his eloquence: ''The passages which 

 escape from the pen of Buftbu show the sensibility as well as the pride 

 of his nature; but always controlled by a superior judgment, they make 

 us feel, so to say, as if we were conversing with a pure intelligence, with 

 only enough humanity to understand us and to be interested in our weak- 

 ness. * * * Posterity will place the works of this great naturalist 

 besiv.e the dialogues of the disciple of Socrates and the teachings of the 

 philosopher of Tusculum. * * * m. de Buffon, more varied, more 

 brilliant, more prodigal of images than the two great representatives of 

 Greece and Borne, joined facility to energy, grace to majesty. His phi- 

 losoiihy, with a character less pronounced, is more varied and less mel- 

 ancholy. Aristotle seems to have written only for savants, Pliny for 

 philosophers, M. de Bufibn for all enlightened men." 



After this quotation shall I injure Condorcet if I admit that Buffon 

 never testified any kindness for him ; that he was the most active friend 

 of his rivals for the place of perpetual secretary of the Academy of 

 Sciences and for that of member of the French Academy ; that the idea 

 of an academic censure, strongly recommended to the ministers of Louis 

 XVI, and which constantly threatened the historian of our labors, orig 

 inated with Buffon. It is worthy of note that the bickerings which at 

 this time disturbed the Academy, as d'Alembert writes to Lagrange, on 

 the 15th of April, 1775, to so great a degree "as to dishearten us for 

 all serious study" and in which the illustrious naturalist took a prom- 

 inent part, are revealed to us by the correspondence of La Harpe and 

 numerous unpublished articles from other sources, but we seek in vain 

 for any trace of them in the eulogies of the loyal secretary. 



Fontenelle left a gap in his eulogies of deceased academicians, from 

 1699 to 174Q; was this by design f One is tempted to think so, on 

 observing among the omitted the Duke d'Escalonne, the famous Law 

 and Pere Gouye. I will leave no doubt of the kind in regard to Condor- 

 cet. If he did not make a eulogy of the Duke de La Vrilliere, it was 

 because in his eyes the title of honorary- bestowed bj* the Academy 



