1 10 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
much, not only as to the essentials of the sociological habit of mind, but also as to those of the propensity of social action. But if, as we have done, we include as a necessary quality active participation in the practical organization of society, then Comte does not perhaps have the same claim to consideration as at least one other among the founders of sociology. I refer to Condorcet, who, indeed, was declared by Comte to share with Hume his " spiritual fatherhood." Let us endeavor to see by an examina- tion of the life-history of Condorcet how far and to what extent the representative lines of sociological approach, the representa- tive phases of social activity, may be fairly said to be exemplified in him.
Condorcet's life is almost coincident with the last half of the eighteenth century. The exact dates of his birth and death, by interesting coincidence, are exactly those of another hero and victim of the eighteenth-century illumination, Lavoisier (1743- 94). Representing at once the synthetic and practical character of their age, these two, like so many other men of the eighteenth century, were at once scientists and men of affairs. They made it the object of their lives to organize the fullest resources of science in application to the needs of human life. In the case of Lavoisier, his scientific and practical activities were directed to the material interests of society, and in that of Condorcet, to the moral and social interest. And the reward of both was the same a violent death at the hands of those whom they only sought to serve. They both belong to the martyrology of social science.
It is not possible to gain any adequate comprehension of the position of Condorcet in the history of sociology unless one realizes something of the spiritual atmosphere into which he was born. Who were his immediate predecessors, who were his con- temporaries ? Newton and Leibnitz had been dead half a genera- tion when Condorcet was born. But the great movement of mathematical and physical science still had enough predominance to attract many, if not most, of the finest minds of the age. But as the eighteenth century advanced there was an increasing ten- dency to bring biological and sociological problems into the
