I would like us to receive a pointer to Yuri Tulupenko's indication for
the Condorcet quote "Today Reason burns the innumerable volumes which
attest the vanity of a caste. Other vestiges remain in public and private
libraries. They must be involved in a common destruction". I cannot
believe that Condorcet meant the deliberate PHYSICAL destruction of
papers relating to the history of the noble families of France. Might he
not have meant the end of the ancient regime's governmental authority
based on the genealogical papers of the aristocrats, "destructed" by the
revolutionary rule of popular/democratic consent?
Marcel Claessen