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| others, rather than developing novel ideas of his own.i His application and his memory had caused his mind to! be richly stored with every kind of knowledge — addto this he was a profound logician. His first work of po-: lemical philosophy was a refutation of the “Dictionnaire

■ des Trois Siecles,” by Sabathier de Castres. He assumed

■ the epistolary form of argument,' which is at once the[ easiest, and affords the fairest scope for the various'S arms of ridicule and reasoning. Voltaire hailed his,, work with delight, and bestowed a degree of praisej highly encouraging to the young author.

| His next labour was the arrangement and exami-i, nation of the “ Pensees ” of Pascal. That illustrious|‘ Christian founded his system on the original weakness| and sin of man. He represented him as a miserable,i feeble, suffering being; spawned, as it were, by eter-s: nity, and cast on a narrow shoal of time ; unknowing ofthe past, terrified by the future, helpless and lost inthe present; and showed that the knowledge and thepromises of the Redeemer were the only stay and theonly consolation of his trembling, painful, and yetsinful existence. Condorcet took an opposite view ofhuman nature. He regarded it as a power that by itslaws assimilated all reason, all good, all knowledge, toits essence, but that tyranny and error stepped be-. tween; and the frauds of priests and the oppression ofpolitical institutions, taking from this being leisure and, freedom of thought, reduced him to the feeble, ignorant,erring state in which most men are sunk. Casting theblame of the faults and ignorance of man on govern-ments, he declared that these ought to be the objects ofimprovement and enlightenment to the philosopher ; for,if these were in the advance of human knowledge, in-stead of lagging so far behind, mankind would speedily| rise to a higher level, and grow, like the laws they obeyed,

; wise, just, and equal. Thiswork appeared of such import-} ance to Voltaire that he reprinted it himself, adding a: preface, in which he said, “ This true philosopher holds•' Pascal in the scales, and is the weightier of the two.”

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