which he conceives to be so distant, ever arrive, the human race,
and the advocates for the perfectibility of man, need not be
alarmed at it. He then proceeds to remove the difficulty in a
manner which I profess not to understand. Having observed, that
the ridiculous prejudices of superstition would by that time have
ceased to throw over morals a corrupt and degrading austerity, he
alludes, either to a promiscuous concubinage, which would prevent
breeding, or to something else as unnatural. To remove the
difficulty in this way will, surely, in the opinion of most men,
be to destroy that virtue and purity of manners, which the
advocates of equality, and of the perfectibility of man, profess
to be the end and object of their views.



CHAPTER 9

Mr Condorcet's conjecture concerning the organic perfectibility
of man, and the indefinite prolongation of human life--Fallacy
of the argument, which infers an unlimited progress from a
partial improvement, the limit of which cannot be ascertained,
illustrated in the breeding of animals, and the cultivation of
plants.


The last question which Mr Condorcet proposes for examination is
the organic perfectibility of man. He observes that if the proofs
which have been already given and which, in their development
will receive greater force in the work itself, are sufficient to
establish the indefinite perfectibility of man upon the