DUPUIS, Charles Francis, an eminent French writer, and member of the Institute, was born of poor parents, at Tryé-Château, between Gisors and Chaumont, on the 26th of October 1742. His father, who was a teacher, instructed him in mathematics and land-surveying. The Duke de la Rochefoucault, who accidentally became acquainted with the youth, took him under his protection, and gave him a bursary or exhibition in the College of Harcourt.

Dupuis made such rapid progress in his studies, that, at the age of twenty-four, he was appointed professor of rhetoric at the college of Lisieux. In his hours of leisure he applied himself to the study of the law, and on the 11th of August 1770 he was admitted an advocate before the parliament. He was charged by the rector of the university with the task of delivering the customary discourse at the distribution of prizes; and he was also employed in the name of the university to compose the funeral oration of the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. These two works having been printed, were admired on account of their elegant latinity, and laid the foundation of the author’s fame as a writer.

The mathematics having been the object of his early studies, he now devoted his more serious attention to that science; and for some years he attended the astronomical lectures of Lalande, with whom he formed an intimate friendship. In 1778 he constructed a telegraph on the principle suggested by Amontons; and he succeeded so well, that he was enabled to correspond with bis friend Μ. Fortin, who, from the village of Bagneux, where he had a country seat, observed with a telescope the signals made by Dupuis at Belleville, and returned his answer on the following day. In this manner they continued to correspond every year, during the fine season, from 1778 to the commencement of the Revolution. Dupuis then destroyed his machine, lest it should render him suspected in those dangerous times.

Much about the same time, Dupuis formed his ingenious theory with respect to the origin of the Greek months. In the course of his investigations upon this subject, he composed a long memoir on the constellations. He had been struck with the singularity of the figures by which the groups of stars called constellations were represented on the most ancient planispheres; and had also remarked that these groups did not present to the eye any form analogous to their representations. Hence he concluded, that the real configurations of these constellations, or asterisms, could not have been the origin of the figures and of the names which had been given to them from the highest antiquity. Dupuis attempted to resolve this enigma, in so far at least as related to the constellations of the zodiac. He conceived that this representation of the heavens during the course of the year must have some reference to the state of the earth, and to the labours of agriculture at the time, and in the country, in which these signs had been invented; so that the zodiac was, for the people who invented it, a sort of calendar at once astronomical and rural. It seemed only necessary, therefore, to discover the clime and the period in which the constellation of Capricon must have arisen with the sun on the day of the summer solstice, and the vernal equinox must have occurred under Libra. It appeared to Dupuis that this clime was Egypt, and that the perfect correspondence between the signs and their significations had existed in that country for a period of between fifteen and sixteen thousand years before the present time; that it had existed only there; and thst this harmony had been disturbed by the effect of the precession of the equinoxes. He therefore ascribed the invention of the signs of the zodiac to the people who then inhabited Upper Egypt or Ethiopia. This was the basis on which Dupuis established his mythological system, and endeavoured to explain the curious subject of fabulous history, and the whole system of the theogony and theology of the ancients.

Persuaded of the importance of his discoveries, which, however, were by no means entirely original, Dupuis published several detached parts of his system in the Journal des Savants for the months of June, October, and December 1777, and of February 1781, which he afterwards collected and published, first in Lalande’s Astronomy, and then in a separate volume in 4to, 1781, under the title of Alemoire sur l' Origine des Constellations, et sur l' Explication de la Fable par l’ Astronomie. The theory propounded in this memoir was refuted by Μ. Bailly, in the fifth volume of his History of Astronomy ; but, at the same time, with a just acknowledgment of the erudition and ingenuity exhibited by the author.

Condorcet proposed Dupuis to Frederick the Great of Prussia as a fit person to succeed Thiebault in the professorship of literature at Berlin; and Dupuis had accepted the invitation, when the death of the king put an end to the engagement. The chair of humanity in the college of France having at the same time become vacant by the death of Μ. Bejot, it was conferred on Dupuis; and in 1788 he became a member of the Academy of Inscriptions. He now resigned his professorship at Lisieux, and was appointed by the administrators of the department of Paris one of the four commissioners of public instruction.

At the commencement of the revolutionary troubles Dupuis sought an asylum at Evreux; and having been chosen a member of the national convention by the department[7:8:287] of the Seine and Oise, he distinguished himself by the moderation of his speeches and public conduct. In the third year of the republic he was elected secretary to the assembly, and in the fourth he was chosen a member of the council of Five Hundred. After the memorable 18th of Brumaire he was elected by the department of the Seine and Oise a member of the legislative body, of which he became the president. He was afterwards proposed as a candidate for the senate; and here terminated his political career.

In 1794 he published his large work, entitled Origine de tous les Cultes, ou la Religion Universelle, 3 vols. 4to, with an atlas, or 12 vols. 12mo. This work excited considerable sensation at first; it gave umbrage to many, was attacked and defended with warmth, at length ceased to be read, and fell into utter neglect. In 1798 he published an abridgment of this work in one volume 8vo, which mct with no better success. Another abridgment of the same work, executed upon a much more methodical plan, was published by Μ. de Tracy. The other works of Dupuis consist of two memoirs on the Pelasgi, inserted in the Memoirs of the Institute ; a memoir On the Zodiac of Tentyra, published in the Revue Philosophique for the month of May 1806; and a Mémoire Explicatif du Zodiaque Chronologique et Mythologique, published the same year, in one volume 4to. It was from the perusal of the poem of Nonnus, which he once thought of translating into French, and of which a fragment was printed in the Nouvel Almanach des Muses for the year 1805, that Dupuis caught the first idea of his astronomical system.

Dupuis died at Is-sur-Til, on the 29th of September 1809, leaving behind him several manuscripts on subjects connected with the works which he had published during his life. He was a member of the legion of honour; and his character was that of an honest man and a paradoxical writer. He was born poor, and never acquired any fortune. Μ. Dacier, secretary to the third class of the Institute, delivered his Eloge; and an historical account of his life and writings was published by his widow. (See also Biographie Universelle.')