852 CONDORCET. 



The great man to whom Condorcet here refers is named in 

 a note : it is Turgot. 



Condorcet himself perished a victim of the French Revolution, 

 and it is to be presumed that he must have renounced the faith 

 here expressed in the necessary progress of the human race to- 

 wards happiness and perfection. 



660. Condorcet's Essai is divided into five parts. 



The Discours Preliminaire, after briefly expounding the funda- 

 mental principles of the Theory of Probability, proceeds to give 

 in order an account of the results obtained in the five parts of 

 the Essai. 



We must state at once that Condorcet's work is excessively 

 difficult ; the difficulty does not lie in the mathematical investi- 

 gations, but in the expressions which are employed to introduce 

 these investigations and to state their results : it is in many cases 

 almost impossible to discover what Condorcet means to say. The 

 obscurity and self contradiction are without any parallel, so far as 

 our experience of mathematical works extends ; some examples 

 will be given in the course of our analysis, but no amount of 

 examples can convey an adequate impression of the extent of 

 the evils. We believe that the work has been very little studied, 

 for we have not observed any recognition of the repulsive peculi- 

 arities by which it is so undesirably distinguished. 



661. The Preliminary Discourse begins with a brief exposition 

 of the fundamental principles of the Theory of Probability, in 

 the course of which an interesting point is raised. After giving 

 the mathematical definition of probability, Condorcet proposes to 

 shew that it is consistent with ordinary notions ; or in other words, 

 that the mathematical measure of probability is an accurate 

 measure of our degree of belief See his page vil. Unfortunately 

 he is extremely obscure in his discussion of the point. 



We shall not delay on the Preliminary Discourse, because it 

 is little more than a statement of the results obtained in the 

 Essay. 



The Preliminary Discourse is in fact superfluous to any person 

 who is sufficiently acquainted with Mathematics to study the 

 Essay, and it would be scarcely intelligible to any other person. 



