afterwards developed more precisely by Rousseau." Locke, he says, first showed the limits of
human knowledge. His "method soon became that of all philosophers, and it is by applying it to
morals, politics, and economics, that they have succeeded in pursuing in these sciences a road
almost as sure as that of the natural sciences."
Condorcet much admires the American Revolution. "Simple common sense taught the inhabitants
of the British Colonies that Englishmen born on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean had precisely
the same rights as those born on the meridian of Greenwich." The United States Constitution, he
says, is based on natural rights, and the American Revolution made the rights of man known to all
Europe, from the Neva to the Guadalquivir. The principles of the French Revolution, however, are
"purer, more precise, deeper than those that guided the Americans." These words were written
while he was in hiding from Robespierre; shortly afterwards, he was caught and imprisoned. He
died in prison, but the manner of his death is uncertain.
He was a believer in the equality of women. He was also the inventor of Malthus's theory of
population, which, however, had not for him the gloomy consequences that it had for Malthus,
because he coupled it with the necessity of birth control. Malthus's father was a disciple of
Condorcet, and it was in this way that Malthus came to know of the theory.
Condorcet is even more enthusiastic and optimistic than Helvétius. He believes that, through
the spread of the principles of the French Revolution, all the major social ills will soon disappear.
Perhaps he was fortunate in not living beyond 1794.
The doctrines of the French revolutionary philosophers, made less enthusiastic and much more
precise, were brought to England by the philosophical radicals, of whom Bentham was the
recognized chief. Bentham was, at first, almost exclusively interested in law; gradually, as he grew
older, his interests widened and his opinions became more subversive. After 1808, he was a
republican, a believer in the equality of women, an enemy of imperialism, and an uncompromising
democrat. Some of these opinions he owed to James Mill. Both believed in the omnipotence of
education. Bentham's adoption of the principle of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number"
was no doubt due to democratic feeling, but it involved opposition to the doctrine of the rights of
man, which he bluntly characterized as "nonsense."