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history, his recognition that histories likewise appropriate their forms from
literary tradition. The displaced character of the
Esquisse
is then illustrated
in the third and main part of this chapter, where I trace out these enduring
providential themes in Condorcet's historical sketch. The final section con-
siders the social knowledge created by this literary move and how its capac-
ity to create a new secular constituency for science anticipates evolutionism.
t
he
E
squissE
in
i
ts
h
istoRical
s
etting
Condorcet wrote the
Esquisse
as an apology for the Enlightenment in the
face of the dissonance brought on by the reactionary excesses of the Terror—
excesses that then threatened to bring him face to face with that notorious
instrument of death that now awaited every enemy of the revolution in the
Place du Trône-Renversé. Denounced as a traitor late in 1793 for his opposi-
tion to the constitution proposed by Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles, Con-
dorcet was in hiding when he began this brief history. He had intended to
compose an apology for his actions in the revolution during the last months
of his seclusion but was persuaded by his wife to abandon this fragment.
He instead undertook what J. Salwyn Schapiro describes as an effort to
“justify mankind itself.”
3
The
Esquisse
was only a preliminary sketch. Had
he escaped capture, his intention was to expand this outline, but this was
not fated to be. Fearing the retribution that would fall upon the house of
Mme Vernet, who had given him asylum, Condorcet set out from Rue Ser-
vandoni to wander the streets of Paris. He was soon imprisoned and died
just a few days later under mysterious circumstances.
Despite the political circumstances that inspired it, the
Esquisse
also
reflects the deeply scientistic thinking of its author. As a mathematician and
political scientist who had gained election to France's
Académie Royale des
Sciences
at age twenty-six, Condorcet was perhaps more closely tied to the
work of science than any other Enlightenment figure save his early mentor,
Jean le Rond d'Alembert. We would expect Condorcet to construct a vision
of history more like what we now find in evolutionism, and indeed this is
true. But it is not this similarity that concerns us just yet. At present I want
to understand how it mediated some of the religious meaning that was so
crucial to Bacon's effort to give science a socially compelling ethos. Bacon
had constructed a constituency for science by fusing the scientific ethos
with a Protestant one. Empirical science, in Bacon's view, was the natural
ally of true Christianity because it arose from the same ethical posture that
Protestants regarded as the entry way to conversion, an obedient receptivity
