A circa 1785 bust of Condorcet at the Louvre Museum, Paris. |
“I am glad the bust of Condorcet has been saved and so well placed. His genius should be before us; while the lamentable, but singular act of ingratitude which tarnished his latter days, may be thrown behind us. I will place under this a syllabus of the doctrines of Epicurus [N2] somewhat in the lapidary style, which I wrote some twenty years ago [c.1799], a like one of the philosophy of Jesus, of nearly the same age is too long to be copied. Vale, et tibipersuade carissimum te esse mihi.”— Thomas Jefferson (1819), “Letter to William Short”, Oct 31 (Ѻ)
“There has been a considerable number of those whom history calls ‘atheists’. Leucippus, Democritus, Xenophanes, and others of the Atomistic and Eleatic schools (Ѻ), are said to have been such. In his Intellectual System, Cudworth puts into this category Seneca and the younger Pliny among the Romans. Since the reformation, such men as: Rabelais, Machiavel, Bruno, Vanini, D'Alembert, Diderot, Buffon, Condorcet, Mirabeau, La Place, Frederic II, and even Pope Leo X, have been charged with atheism.”— Willis Lord (1875), Christian Theology for the People (pg. 67)
“The term sociology was invented and adopted in its equivalent by Auguste Comte in his ‘hilosophie Positive.’ It makes its first appearance in the following sentence: "After Montesquieu, the next great addition to Sociology (which is the term I may be allowed to invent, to designate Social Physics) was made by Condorcet proceeding on the views suggested by his illustrious friend Turgot" (b. vi. chap. ii.). The term Social Physics, also used by Comte as its equivalent, is significant, suggesting as it does the materialistic theory of man which Comte takes no pains to conceal. For according to his teachings, the higher nature of man is simply the result of a more highly organized brain, and the psychical and social phenomena of humanity depend solely on the quality and conditions of cerebral activity.”— Noah Porter (1880), “Herbert Spencer’s Theory of Sociology” [2]