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CONDORCET.

1744 — 1794 .

Marie Jean Antoine de Caritat, marquis de Condor-cet, was born at Saint Quentin , in Picardy, on the 17th ofSeptember, 1744. It is said that at an early age he gavetokens of the talents that distinguished him. The bentof his genius led him to the study of the exact sciences.It is the distinction of these pursuits that they lead atonce to celebrity. A discovery in mathematics can nei-ther be denied nor passed over.

Condorcet, at the age of twenty-one, was the author of a memoir on the integral calculus, one of the highestbranches of the pure mathematics, in which at thattime but small advances had been made, although ithas since become one of the most powerful instrumentsof physical investigation. This essay gave him atonce a title to be regarded as a successor worthy ofNewton and Leibnitz , whose discoveries in the infi-nitesimal analysis he subsequently extended. Thisessay was published In the Memoires des SavantsEtrangers, and he was elected coadjutor of Grandjeande Pouchy, in the secretaryship of the Academy ofSciences. Eager to justify the choice of the Academy ,he continued successfully to direct his labours to thehigher mathematics. Among his essays on these branchesof science may be mentioned a general method of findingthe integral of an equation in finite terms wheneversuch an integral exists, and the general solution of theproblem of maxima and minima. Had he continued tocultivate pure mathematics, there can be no doubt thathe would have attained the greatest celebrity in thatdepartment of science.

Condorcet ’s mind was one of those in which reasonpreponderates to the exclusion of the imagination, so