Civilisation is only in its infancy.

Bacon, like Pascal, had conceived it to be in its old age.

Fontenelle and Perrault seem to have regarded it as in its virility; they set no term to its duration, but they did not dwell on future prospects.

The Abbe was the first to fix his eye on the remote destinies of the race and name immense periods of time.

It did not occur to him to consider that our destinies are bound up with those of the solar system, and that it is useless to operate with millennial periods of progress unless you are assured of a corresponding stability in the cosmic environment.
As a test of the progress which reason has already made, Saint-Pierre asserts that a comparison of the best English and French works on morals and politics with the best works of Plato and Aristotle proves that the human race has made a sensible advance.