Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
the picture of the march and progress of the human mind becomes truly
historical. Philosophy has nothing more to guess, no more hypothetical
surmises to make; it is enough to assemble and order the facts and to
show the useful truths that can be derived from their connections and
from their totality.
48
If science had decoded the mechanism of progress so as to explain its past
course, this meant that it could likewise foresee history's ultimate consum-
mation. With the advent of science, the “human mind was not yet free but it
knew that it was formed to be so,” and the enemies of progress who “dared
to insist that it should be kept in its old chains or to try and impose new
ones upon it, were forced to show why it should submit to them; and from
that day onwards it was certain that they would soon be broken.”
49
Had Condorcet developed a new calendar to go with the
Esquisse
, it
might have emulated the one he helped to redesign in 1793 as a member
of the National Convention. The Christian calendar began with the birth
of its founder because all of history found its meaning in that revelation,
and thus the scientific apocalypse that had inspired the French Revolution
required a new beginning. Now the first day of history was September 22,
1792, the day the republic was declared. Had Condorcet had his way, his-
tory might have begun with the birth of Descartes, but the Convention's
thinking was nevertheless very much like his own: since the French Revolu-
tion was born from humanity's first full awakening to the ways of universal
reason, it likewise represented the birth of an age utterly different from
all that had preceded it. Condorcet's sympathy for this alternative dating
of history's apocalypse can be seen in the title of the ninth and climactic
chapter of his
Esquisse
: “From Descartes to the Foundation of the French
Republic.” If science was the revelation of this new gospel, the Christmas
of the modern age, then the founding of the French Republic was the Pen-
tecost that had established the universal church of reason, that human
instrument by which nature would now propagate the message of science
to the whole world. The French Revolution followed from science's full
entry into human consciousness, and therefore its liberating influence was
certain to become a global phenomenon. This was shown by the fact that
“in Europe the principles of the French constitution are already those of
all enlightened men.”
50
Such an apocalyptic view also implied that the previous age of darkness
had been mere prehistory, an age worthy of examination only to the extent
that it further illuminated modernity and its future course. The premodern
