Felicity has never been realised in any period of the past.

No government, however esteemed, set before itself to achieve what ought to be the sole object of government, "the greatest happiness of the greatest number of individuals." Now, for the first time in human history, intellectual enlightenment, other circumstances fortunately concurring, has brought about a condition of things, in which this object can no longer be ignored, and there is a prospect that it will gradually gain the ascendant.

In the meantime, things have improved; the diffusion of knowledge is daily ameliorating men's lot, and far from envying any age in the past we ought to consider ourselves much happier than the ancients.
We may wonder at this writer's easy confidence in applying the criterion of happiness to different societies.

Yet the difficulty of such comparisons was, I believe, first pointed out by Comte.

[Footnote: Cours de philosophie positive, iv.