itled, however we may be disposed to strike the balance
between the undoubted injuries and the undoubted advantages which it has
been the means of dealing to the civilisation of the west. Never perhaps
was there so thorough an inversion of the true view of the comparative
elevation of different parts of human character, as is implied in
Condorcet's strange hint that Cromwell's satellites would have been much
better men if they had carried instead of the Bible at their saddle-bows
some merry book of the stamp of Voltaire's _Pucelle_.[62]

Apart from the misreading of history in explaining religion by the folly
of the many and the frauds of a few, Condorcet's interpretation involved
the profoundest infidelity to his own doctrine of the intrinsic purity
and exaltation of human nature. This doctrine ought in all reason to
have led him to look for the secret of the popular acceptance of beliefs
that to him seemed most outrageous, in some possibly finer side which
they might possess for others, appealing not to the lower but to the
higher qualities of a nature with instincts of perfection. Take his
account of Purgatory, for instance. The priests, he says, drew up so
minute and comprehensive a table of sins that nobody could hope to
escape from censure. Here you come upon one of the most lucrative
branches of the sacerdotal trafficking; people were taught to imagine a
hell of limited duration, which the priests only had the power to
abridge; and this grace they sold, first to the living, then to the
kinsmen and friends of the dead.[63] Now it was surely more worthy of a
belief in the natural depravity than in the natural perfectibility of
the sons of Adam, thus to assume without parley or proviso a base
mercenariness on the one hand, and grovelling terror on the other, as
the origin of a doctrine which was obviously susceptible of a kinder
explanation. Would it not have been more consistent with belief in human
goodness to refer the doctrine to a merciful and affectionate and truly
humanising anxiety to assuage the horrors of what is perhaps the most
frightful idea that has ever corroded human character, the idea of
eternal punishment? We could in part have pardoned Condorcet if he had
striven to invent ever so fanciful origins for opinions and belief in
his solicitude for the credit of humanity. As it is, he distorts the
history of religion only to humanity's discredit. How, if the people
were always predisposed to virtue, wer