An interesting fellow:

• A French savant

• Professor of rhetoric (from 1766) at the Collège de Lisieux, Paris,

• Studied for the law in his spare time and was received as avocat in 1770.

• He ventured into the field of mathematics and served on the committee that developed the French Republican Calendar.

• In 1778, he invented a telegraph with which he was able to correspond with his friend Fortin de Bagneux, and must be considered among the first inventors of the telegraph that was perfected by Claude Chappe.

• Devoted himself to the study of astronomy (his tutor was Lalande)

• He came to the attention of Frederick the Great, who appointed him secretary but died before Dupuis could take up duties in Berlin.

• He lectured in Latin at the Collège de France

• After the start of the Revolution, Dupuis fled Paris, appalled by the massacres of September 1792.

• When he returned he discovered he had been elected to the National Convention, where he sat on the Council of Five Hundred, and was President of the Legislative Body after the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire

On religion:

The beginnings of the formal denial of the existence of Jesus can be traced to late 18th century France, and the works of Constantin François Chassebœuf de Volney (1757–1820) and Dupuis.

• Volney and Dupuis argued that Christianity was an amalgamation of various ancient mythologies and that Jesus was a mythical character.

• Dupuis argued that ancient rituals in Syria, Egypt and Persia had influenced the Christian story which was allegorized as the histories of solar deities, such as Sol Invictus.

• He argued also that Jewish and Christian scriptures could be interpreted according to the solar pattern, e.g. the Fall of Man in Genesis being an allegory of the hardship caused by winter, and the resurrection of Jesus an allegory for the growth of the sun's strength in the sign of Aries at the spring equinox.

• Volney published before Dupuis but made use of a draft version of Dupuis' work, and followed much of his argument.