Condorcet proposed Dupuis to Frederick the Great of Prussia as a fit person to succeed Thiébault in the professorship of literature at Berlin; and Dupuis had accepted the invitation, when the death of the king cancelled the engagement. The chair of humanity in the College of France having at the same time become vacant, 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 outbreak of the Revolutionary troubles Dupuis sought safety at Évreux; and, having been chosen a member of the National Convention by the department of Seine-et-Oise, he distinguished himself by his moderation. 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 Bonaparte's _coup d'état_ of the 18th Brumaire he was elected by the department of Seine-et-Oise a member of the Legislative Body, of which he became the president. He was proposed as a candidate for the senate, but resolved to abandon politics, devoting himself during the rest of his life to his favourite studies.
In 1795 he published the work by which he is best known, entitled _Origine de tous les cultes, ou la religion universelle_ (3 vols. 4to, with an atlas, or 12 vols. 12mo). This work, of which an edition revised by P.R. Auguis was published in 1822 (10th ed., 1835-1836), became the subject of much bitter controversy, and the theory it propounded as to the origin of mythology in Upper Egypt led to the expedition organized by Napoleon for the exploration of that country. In 1798 Dupuis published an abridgment of his work in one volume 8vo, which met with no better success than the original. Another abridgment of the same work, executed upon a much more methodical plan, was published by M. 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 May 1806; and a _Mémoire explicatif du zodiaque chronologique et mythologique_, published the same year, in one volume 4to. He died on the 29th of September 1809.
