most likely far greater); no more is it a question of a fool who is afraid of rising against tyrants for fear of forming a rash judgment.'[8] This ability to conceive a mean case between two extremes was not among Condorcet's gifts. His mind dwelt too much in the region of excess, alike when he measured the possibilities of the good, and coloured the motives and the situation of those whom he counted the bad. A Christian was one who wasted his days in merely resisting the flesh; anybody who declined to rise against a tyrant was the victim of a slavish scrupulosity. He rather sympathises with a scientific traveller, to whom the especial charm of natural history resides in the buffets which, at each step that it takes, it inflicts upon Moses.[9] Well, this temper is not the richest nor the highest, but it often exists in alliance with rich and high qualities. It was so with Condorcet. And we are particularly bound to remember that with him a harsh and impatient humour was not, as is so often the case, the veil for an indolent reluctance to form painstaking judgments. Few workers have been so conscientious as he was, in the labour that he bestowed upon subjects which he held to be worthy of deliberate scrutiny and consideration. His defect was in finding too few of such subjects, and in having too many foregone conclusions. Turgot and Montesquieu are perhaps the only two eminent men in France during this part of the century, of whom the same defect might not be alleged. Again, Condorcet's impatience of underlying temperament did not prevent him from filling his compositions with solid, sober, and profound reflections, the products of grave and sustained meditation upon an experience, much of which must have been severely trying and repugnant to a man of his constitution. While recognising this trait, then, let us not overstate either it or its consequences.