CHAPTER X.THE YEAR 2440.
1.
The leaders of thought in France did not look far forward into the future or attempt to trace the definite lines on which the human race might be expected to develop.

They contented themselves with principles and vague generalities, and they had no illusions as to the slowness of the process of social amelioration; a rational morality, the condition of improvement, was only in its infancy.

A passage in a work of the Abbe Morellet probably reflects faithfully enough the comfortable though not extravagant optimism which was current.

[Footnote: Reflexions sur les avantages d'ecrire et d'imprimer sur les matieres de l'administration (1764); in Melanges, vol.iii.p.

55.