e priests, sprung of the same
people and bred in the same traditions, so invariably and incurably
devoted to baseness and hypocrisy? Was the nature of a priest absolutely
devoid of what physicians call recuperative force, restoring him to a
sound mind, in spite of professional perversion? In fine, if man had
been so grossly enslaved in moral nature from the beginning of the world
down to the year 1789 or thereabouts, how was it possible that
notwithstanding the admitted slowness of civilising processes, he should
suddenly spring forth the very perfectible and nearly perfected being
that Condorcet passionately imagined him to be?[64]

It has already been hinted that there was one partial exception to
Condorcet's otherwise all-embracing animosity against religion. This was
Mahometanism. Towards this his attitude is fully appreciative, though of
course he deplores the superstitions which mixed themselves up with the
Arabian prophet's efforts for the purification of the men of his nation.
After the seven vials of fiery wrath have been poured out upon the creed
of Palestine, it is refreshing to find the creed of Arabia almost
patronised and praised. The writer who could not have found in his heart
to think Gregory the Great or Hildebrand other than a mercenary
impostor, nor Cromwell other than an ambitious hypocrite, admits with
exquisite blandness of Mahomet that he had the art of employing all the
means of subjugating men _avec adresse, mais avec grandeur_.[65] Another
reason, no doubt, besides his hatred of the Church, lay at the bottom of
Condorcet's tolerance or more towards Mahometanism. The Arabian
superstition was not fatal to knowledge, Arabian activity in algebra,
chemistry, optics, and astronomy, atoned in Condorcet's eyes for the
Koran.

It is fair to add further, that Condorcet showed a more just
appreciation of the effects of Protestantism upon western development
than has been common among French thinkers. He recognises that men who
had learnt, however imperfectly, to submit their religious prejudices to
rational examination, would naturally be likely to extend the process to
political prejudices also. Moreover, if the reformed churches refused to
render to reason all its rights, still they agreed that its prison
should be less narrow; the chain was not broken, but it ceased to be
either so heavy or so short as it had been. And in countries where what
was by the dominant sect insolently styled tolerance succe