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(Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Car it at , Marquis de), French philosopher and politician, b. Ribemont, Picardy, 17 Sept. 1743. Dedicated to the Virgin by a pious mother, he was kept in girl’s clothes until the age of 11. Sent to a Jesuit’s school, he soon gave up religion. At sixteen he maintained a mathematical thesis in the presence of Alembert. In the next year he dedicated to Turgot a Profe ion of Faith . After some mathematical works, he was made member of the Academy, of which he was appointed perpetual secretary, 1773. In 1776 he published his atheistic Letters of a Theologian . He also wrote biographies of Turgot and Voltaire, and in favor of American independence and against negro slavery. In 1791 he represented Paris in the National A embly, of which he became Secretary. It was on his motion that, in the following year, all orders of nobility were abolished. Voting against the death of the king and siding with the Gironde drew on him the vengeance of the extreme party. He took shelter with Madame Vernet, but fearing to bring into trouble her and his wife, at whose instigation he wrote his fine Sketch of the Progre of the Human Mind while in hiding, he left, but, being arrested, died of exhaustion or by poison self-administered, at Bourg la Reine, 27 March, 1794.