52.
The passage of Pascal occurs in the Fragment d'un traite du vide, not published till 1779 (now included in the Pensees, Premiere Partie, Art.
I), and therefore without influence on the origination of the theory of progress.

It has been pointed out that Guillaume Colletet had in 1636 expressed a similar view (Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, v.

185-6).] Descartes expressed it like Bacon, and it was taken up and repeated by many whom Descartes influenced.

Pascal, who till 1654 was a man of science and a convert to Cartesian ideas, put it in a striking way.
The whole sequence of men (he says) during so many centuries should be considered as a single man, continually existing and continually learning.

At each stage of his life this universal man profited by the knowledge he had acquired in the preceding stages, and he is now in his old age.