The conclusion is that it is only those who are profoundly ignorant of the past who can regret "the good old times." Throughout this survey Chastellux does not, like Turgot, make any attempt to show that the race was progressing, however slowly.

On the contrary, he sets the beginning of continuous Progress in the Renaissance--here agreeing with d'Alembert and Voltaire.

The intellectual movement, which originated then and resulted in the enlightenment of his own day, was a condition of social progress.

But alone it would not have been enough, as is proved by the fact that the intellectual brilliancy of the great age of Greece exerted no beneficent effects on the well-being of the people.

Nor indeed was there any perceptible improvement in the prospect of happiness for the people at large during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, notwithstanding the progress of science and the arts.