During the French Revolution, this egalitarian, antiauthoritarian, liberal legislation (which
challenged parental authority while affirming that of the new family head, in some case to the
detriment of his spouse) was greeted with considerable optimism, at least by men—despite being
quite radical for the time. Proponents of this revolutionary legislation were convinced that they had
found the key to future equality. Since, moreover, the Civil Code granted everyone equal rights with
respect to the market and property, and guilds had been abolished, the ultimate outcome seemed clear:
such a system would inevitably eliminate the inequalities of the past. The marquis de Condorcet gave
forceful expression to this optimistic view in his Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de
l’esprit humain (1794): “It is easy to prove that fortunes tend naturally toward equality, and that
excessive differences of wealth either cannot exist or must promptly cease, if the civil laws do not
establish artificial ways of perpetuating and amassing such fortunes, and if freedom of commerce and
industry eliminate the advantage that any prohibitive law or fiscal privilege gives to acquired
wealth.”