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THE GENERAL PROGRESS OF MAN: ABBE DE SAINT-PIERRE.
The revolutionary speculations on the social and moral condition of man which were the outstanding feature of the eighteenth century in France, and began about 1750, were the development of the intellectual movement of the seventeenth, which had changed the outlook of speculative thought.

It was one continuous rationalistic movement.

In the days of Racine and Perrault men had been complacently conscious of the enlightenment of the age in which they were living, and as time went on, this consciousness became stronger and acuter; it is a note of the age of Voltaire.

In the last years of Louis XIV., and in the years which followed, the contrast between this mental enlightenment and the dark background--the social evils and miseries of the kingdom, the gross misgovernment and oppression--began to insinuate itself into men's minds.