82 Some Account of the Life and Writings of Condorcet. 



as the advancement of the sciences. The above passage is 

 merely the frank expression of the impatience of a young man, 

 whose ardpnt spirit was only to be satisfied with the contemplation 

 of a grand whole. He subsequently ascertained that the state of 

 science required another course. *' Glory (he observes), which 

 was formerly the prize of genius alone, can nowadays be only 

 the prize of genius and labour united." 



Judging severely of his first writings, which he had collected 

 under the modest title of " Attempts at Analysis," he com- 

 posed in his more mature age a new Treatise, in which the 

 diflferential calculus and the integral calculus, embraced in 

 the aggregate, were developed and applied, and in which 

 the hypothesis of infinite simals was replaced by new, very 

 exact and very ingenious considerations. The printing of this 

 work, begun in 1786, was interrupted at the sixteenth sheet. 

 The manuscript however was not lost ; and it is a drawback upon 

 the memory of Condorcet as well as upon science, that it ha» 

 not been published ; for it appears that he bestowed great atten- 

 tion upon it. In order to judge him with equity as to his other 

 mathematical writings, we ought rather to consider what he has 

 shown himself capable of doing than what he has done. Never- 

 theless, if we confine ourselves to the memoirs which he pub- 

 lished in the Academical Collections of Paris, Turin, and Peters- 

 burgh, and which chiefly concern the application of the series 

 to the resolution of every kind of differential equation, we shall 

 find him always at the head of the most recent discoveries and 

 of the most difficult theories, throwing out useful observations 

 as to every thing which occu]>ied the first geometricians of his 

 time, pointing out to their inquiries new combinations, and pre- 

 senting remarks worthy of their attention. Such is the employ- 

 ment of the equations with finite differences for determining the 

 arbitrary functions contained in the integrals of the partial dif- 

 ferential equations : such also is the integration of the equations 

 with mixed differences, which he was the first to consider. In 

 1778 he shared a prize from the Academy of Berlin, on the 

 theory of comets : at the end of some experiments on the re- 

 sistance of fluids, made in conjunction with Bossut and D'Alem- 

 bert, he gave formulae for deducing the laws of phaenomena from 

 observations : lastly, he inserted some articles on the subject of 

 transcendent mathematics in the supplements of both the old 

 and new Encyclopaedia. 



The merit of these labours will appear still greater, when we 

 consider that they were merely accessories in the career into 

 which Condorcet was led by the desire of contributing in the 

 most efficacious manner to the general improvement of the hu- 

 man mind. Elected a member of the Academy in 1769, and 

 afterwards in 1771 assistant secretary to Grand- Jean de Fouchy, 



he 



