There are moments in life, like these days, when hope in human nature and human destiny seems impossible. Moments when we feel that darkness and evil have so contaminated life and the world that goodness, truth and integrity seem unrealizable possibilities.

At such moments I always remember the French mathematician and philosopher Marquis de Condorcet and the final days of his life.

Let me tell you his story.

Before the French Revolution, Condorcet was a distinguished and well-known thinker. He was an eminent mathematician whose work on probability secured him a lasting place in the history of that discipline. He was a member of scientific academies in France and elsewhere in Europe. He was a friend of Voltaire, Turgot and many other thinkers of his time, and discussion gatherings hosted by him and his thoughtful writer wife Sophie were attended by prominent figures such as Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and one of the fathers of its Constitution and Declaration of Independence, and Thomas Paine, the revolutionary philosopher who played an important role in both the French and American revolutions.

Condorcet’s ideas were far ahead of the period in which he lived. He was a strong opponent of capital punishment, a defender of equal freedoms for women, and a passionate supporter of individual liberty and economic reform aimed at improving the circumstances of France’s lower classes. During the French Revolution he joined the revolutionaries and spent his wealth and social position in support of the revolution’s success.

He was invited to the Constituent Assembly and was present during the trial of Louis XVI, openly opposing the king’s execution. The Jacobins rejected Condorcet’s proposed constitution and, because of his opposition to the execution of Louis XVI, placed him under pursuit. During the period of terror following the revolution, this was effectively a death sentence.

Condorcet fled and went into hiding. He had spent all his wealth and social position on his ideals and on the French Revolution, yet what had come into being was not his dream but a nightmare filled with violence, blood and terror, one that now demanded the only possession he had left: his life. Perhaps anyone else in his position might have broken. He could have given himself every reason to become pessimistic about human nature, the cyclical futility of the world, the meaninglessness of life and every human ideal. Yet, astonishingly, he chose another path.

During the days when he awaited his end, he wrote a book titled Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind.

It is one of the most hopeful and optimistic books ever written about humanity and its future. Every page is filled with faith in human beings and in their capacity to overcome the darkness of their history. In the Persian rendering preserved here, he writes:

“Although my body lives among the people of this age, I have always seen myself in a world not yet realised: a world in which nations move toward equality, slavery has disappeared from the entire world, every human being is free, and women, like men, have gained equal rights in society. A world in which execution has been abolished and human individuality moves through an endless cycle of physical, spiritual and moral progress. I have always lived in that world and among the people of that world, and I have faith that one day the world I see will become real.”

Condorcet ended his own life shortly before he was to be delivered to the Jacobin tribunal. The statements below are several enduring sentences attributed to him in this source, and they speak to us with particular force in days such as these:

— What any human being can learn in solitude and in the silence of books can never be completely destroyed under any tyranny.

— Even under the freest constitution in the world, ignorant people will remain enslaved. For this reason individual consciousness is the only path to the liberation of a society.

— Despite the temporary victory of prejudice and violence, and all the support they receive from corrupt governments and people kept in ignorance, truth alone will, over time, decisively overcome all this darkness.