To project them into the future was a new thing, and when in 1770 Sebastien Mercier described what human civilisation would be in A.D.2440, it was a telling sign of the power which the idea of Progress was beginning to exercise.
2.
Mercier has been remembered, or rather forgotten, as an inferior dramatist.

He was a good deal more, and the researches of M.Beclard into his life and works enable us to appreciate him.

If it is an overstatement to say that his soul reflected in miniature the very soul of his age, [Footnote: L.Beclard, Sebastien Mercier, sa vie, son oeuvre, son temps (1903), p.

vii.] he was assuredly one of its characteristic products.

He reminds us in some ways of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, who was one of his heroes.