Most of the philosophers of the French Revolution combined science with beliefs associated with
Rousseau. Helvétius and Condorcet may be regarded as typical in their combination of
rationalism and enthusiasm.
Helvétius ( 1715-1771) had the honour of having his book De l'Esprit ( 1758) condemned by
the Sorbonne and burnt by the hangman. Bentham read him in 1769 and immediately determined
to devote his life to the principles of legislation, saying: "What Bacon was to the physical world,
Helvétius was to the moral. The moral world has therefore had its Bacon, but its Newton is still
to come." James Mill took Helvétius as his guide in the education of his son John Stuart.
Following Locke's doctrine that the mind is a tabula rasa, Helvétius considered the differences
between individuals entirely due to differences of education: in every individual, his talents and
his virtues are the effect of his instruction. Genius, he maintains, is often due to chance: if
Shakespeare had not been caught poaching, he would have been a wool merchant. His interest in
legislation comes from the doctrine that the principal instructors of adolescence are the forms of
government and the consequent manners and customs. Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are
made stupid by education.
In ethics, Helvétius was a utilitarian; he considered pleasure to be the good. In religion, he was
a deist, and vehemently anti-clerical. In theory of knowledge, he adopted a simplified version of
Locke: "Enlightened by Locke, we know that it is to the sense-organs we owe our ideas, and
consequently our mind." Physical sensibility, he says, is the sole cause of our actions, our
thoughts, our passions, and our sociability. He strongly disagrees with Rousseau as to the value of
knowledge, which he rates very highly.
His doctrine is optimistic, since only a perfect education is needed to make men perfect. There is a
suggestion that it would be easy to find a perfect education if the priests were got out of the way.
Condorcet ( 1743-1794) has opinions similar to those of Helvétius, but more influenced by
Rousseau. The rights of man, he says, are all deduced from this one truth, that he is a sensitive
being, capable of making reasonings and acquiring moral ideas, from which it follows that men
can no longer be divided into rulers and subjects, liars and dupes. "These principles, for which the
generous Sydney gave his life and to which Locke attached the authority of his name, were