C0ND0RCKT.

185

king should be considered as having abdicated. Hisview met with few co-operators at that crisis, and wasset aside. He busied himself, at the same time, informing a plan, of national education, and broughtforward a system on a more philosophical and com-prehensive scale than had hitherto been meditated. Itwas his design to secure to the human race, to usehis own expressions, the means of satisfying theirnecessities, and securing their welfare ; of knowing andexercising their rights, and of understanding and ful-filling their duties; giving scope to all to carry theirindustry to a state of perfection, and to render them-selves capable of the social functions which they werecalled upon to exert; to develope to their extent thetalents given them by nature; and thus to establish inthe nation a real equality, so to meet the politicalequality established by law.

The system of instruction which was to realise soblessed a state of society he considered as properlyplaced in the hands of government. He looked forward,indeed, to the time when public establishments foreducation woull become superfluous and even detri-mental ; but this would only be when right reasonprevailed, and it was no longer necessary for the wiserfew to labour to destroy the prejudices and mistakes ofthe ignorant many ; when superstition should be nomore; and when each man should find in his ownknowledge, and in the rectitude of his mind, armssufficient to combat every species of imposition.

Condorcet looked on virtue as capable of exact de-monstration, as conducive to public and individual hap-piness, and on man as a sufficiently reasonable beingto follow its dictates, if sufficiently enlightened, withoutthe aid of religion or the coercion of punishment. Heregarded the passions as capable of being controlled bythe understanding. He, benevolent and conscientious,practising no vice, carefully extirpating from his mindall that he believed to be error, w r as to himself amirror in which the whole human race was reflected.