176 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

that whatever could not be definitively proved to hisunderstanding he considered absurd. This textureof intellect, at a time when philosophy was at work todiscard, not only the errors of Catholicism , but to sub-vert Christianity itself, led him to ally himself with menwho, while they exerted themselves to enlighten andenfranchise their fellow-creatures from the miseries ofsuperstition, unfortunately went a step beyond, and over-threw, though they knew it not, the boundaries ofmorals as well as of religion. These men, for the mostpart, benevolent, studious, and virtuous, believed it easyto lead their fellow-creatures into the same road whichthey themselves trod; and that, bigotry and superstitionbeing overthrown, persecution would vanish, and man-kind live in a brotherhood of peace. Their passionsbeing under their control, they supposed that, couldreason be equally developed in all men, they would be-come, like themselves, dispassionate and tolerant. Con-dorcet was the intimate friend of D’Alembert ; he visitedVoltaire with him at Fernay, and was hailed as theyoungest and most promising of his disciples. The lattercertainly did not possess the calmness and disciplinedmind of D’Alembert , but his genius and ardent bene-volence brought excuses for the errors of his temper ;and Condorcet , while he saw his faults, paid the tributeof flattery which the patriarch of French literatureconsidered his due. As he became intimate with thesephilosophers, and participated in their views, he beganto consider that there were truths of more importancethan mathematical demonstrations, — truths that wouldsubvert the impostures of priests, and give men noblerand higher rules of action than those instituted by thepapal church. It is the misfortune of Catholicism that,by entangling the absurd and the true, those who throwoff its errors are too apt, without examination, to castaway the truths which it has overgrown and distorted ;but which minds of truer discernment can see and ac-knowledge. Condorcet , on first engaging in the laboursof moral philosophy, took the easier path of refuting