FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: Mill's _Autobiography_ p. 170.]

[Footnote 6: M. Renan's _Réforme Intellectuelle et Morale de la France_,
p. 98.]

[Footnote 7: _Etudes d'Histoire Religieuse_, Preface, p. xvi.]

[Footnote 8: In 1779 the Academy of Prussia announced this as the
question for their annual prize essay:--'_S'il est utile au peuple
d'être trompé_.' They received thirty-three essays; twenty showing that
it is not useful, thirteen showing that it is. The Academy, with an
impartiality that caused much amusement in Paris and Berlin, awarded two
prizes, one to the best proof of the negative answer, another to the
best proof of the affirmative. See Bartholmess, _Hist. Philosophique de
l'Académie de Prusse_, i. 281, and ii. 278. Condorcet did not actually
compete for the prize, but he wrote a very acute piece, suggested by the
theme, which was printed in 1790. _Oeuv._ v. 343.

To illustrate the common fact of certain currents of thought being in
the air at given times, we may mention that in 1770 was published the
posthumous work of another Frenchman, Chesneau du Marsais (1676-1756)
entitled:--'_Essai sur les Préjugés; ou de l'influence des Opinions sur
les Moeurs et sur le Bonheur des Hommes_.' The principal prejudices to
which he refers are classed under Antiquity--Ancestry--Native
Country--Religion--Respect for Wealth. Some of the reasoning is almost
verbally identical with Condorcet's. For an account of Du Marsais, see
D'Alembert, _Oeuv._ iii 481.]