206 CONDORCET : A BIOGRAPHY. 



young secretary of the Academy of Scieuces. This was for Condorcet 

 a very great honor, and, moreover, deserved, on account of the merit 

 of the work. Am I mistaken, however, in supposing that in this action 

 of Voltaire with the sincere homage of the author of the Diet lonnaire 

 p]dloso])hique was mingled some animosity against the Jansenistic writer; 

 that the author of the Henriade, of Mero;pe, and of so many admirable 

 smaller poems, saw with a secret joy the infallibility of that man attacked 

 who, placed in the first rank among prose writers, had dared to say, even 

 after the publication of the Cid and of Cinna, that "all poetry was in fact 

 only a jargon'''' f A certain amount of anger must have influenced the pen 

 of the illustrious poet when, in his api)reciation of a work in which the 

 praise is always so frank and the criticism so moderate, he says to Con- 

 dorcet, ''You have shown us the inside of the head of Serapis, and we 

 find in it rats and spider-webs." 



In Ooudorcet's edition of Pascal we find this thought oft repeated : 

 "Speaking according to the natural light of reason, if there is a God, He 

 is infinitely incomprehensible, since having no beginning and no end, he 

 can have no connection with us. We are then capable of knowing neither 

 what he is nor if he is.^^ The portion of the phrase nor if lie is is not found 

 in the old editions of the works of the illustrious thinker. Condorcet 

 seemed, therefore, to have been guilty of an inexcusable interpolation 

 of the text. The suspicion that he had committed this grave offense 

 gained weight when, in 1803, M. Renouard, the celebrated bibliographer, 

 declared (these are his own words) that "an obstinate search through the 

 manuscripts of Pascal, preserved in the Eoyal Library, had failed to 

 discover the three contested words." 



The fact stated by M. Renouard must at the time have caused some 

 uncertainty even in the minds of those who had never doubted the per- 

 fect rectitude of Condorcet. In this day the testimony of this celebrated 

 librarian is worth nothing, since we know that in 1812 M. Renouard 

 frankly acknowledged that the fourth page of the almost illegible manu- 

 script of the library did in fact contain the thought of Pascal as Condor- 

 cet had published it. To cut short all gratuitous supposition in regard 

 to this supposed alteration of the precious manuscript, I will add that 

 the contested words are found in an edition of the TlioiigMs anterior 

 to that of Condorcet, and published by Father Desmolets. 



I cannot allow this opportunity to escape of justifying Condor- 

 cet from an imputation of the same nature, shocking alike from its 

 violence and its levity. Read, gentlemen, the article upon Vauvenar- 

 gues, in the work of La Harpe, entitled Fliilosophy of theXVIlIth century. 

 The irascible critic first recalls to memory the eloquent prayer which 

 terminates the book of this moralist, and, immediately after accuses 

 Condorcet of having afiirmed, with anti-religious views, that the prayer 

 was not by Vauvenargues. It is in the Commentary upon the tvorls of 

 Voltaire, says La Harpe, that this philosophical falsehood is to be found. 



Never, assuredly, was reproach of such gravity expressed in plainer 



