He would have acknowledged that institutions and opinions to which modern reason may give short shrift were natural and useful in their day, and would have recognised that at any stage of history the heritage of the past is no less necessary to progress than the solvent power of new ideas.

Most thinkers of his time were inclined to judge the past career of humanity anachronistically.

All the things that had been done or thought which could not be justified in the new age of enlightenment, were regarded as gratuitous and inexcusable errors.

The traditions, superstitions, and customs, the whole "code of fraud and woe" transmitted from the past, weighed then too heavily in France to allow the school of reform to do impartial justice to their origins.

They felt a sort of resentment against history.