Morellet held, like d'Holbach, that society is only the development and improvement of nature itself (ib.p.

6).] Let us hope for the amelioration of man's lot as a consequence of the progress of the enlightenment (des lumieres) and labours of the educated (des gens instruits); let us trust that the errors and even the injustices of our age may not rob us of this consoling hope.

The history of society presents a continuous alternation of light and darkness, reason and extravagance, humanity and barbarism; but in the succession of ages we can observe good gradually increasing in ever greater proportion.

What educated man, if he is not a misanthrope or misled by vain declamations, would really wish he had lived in the barbarous and poetical time which Homer paints in such fair and terrifying colours?
Who regrets that he was not born at Sparta among those pretended heroes who made it a virtue to insult nature, practised theft, and gloried in the murder of a Helot; or at Carthage, the scene of human sacrifices, or at Rome amid the proscriptions or under the rule of a Nero or a Caligula?
Let as agree that man advances, though slowly, towards light and happiness.
But though the most influential writers were sober in speculating about the future, it is significant of their effectiveness in diffusing the idea of Progress that now for the first time a prophetic Utopia was constructed.

Hitherto, as I have before observed, ideal states were either projected into the remote past or set in some distant, vaguely-known region, where fancy could build freely.