Our mediocre savants know twenty times as much as Socrates and Confucius, but our most virtuous men are not more virtuous than they.
The growth of science has added much to the arts and conveniences of life, and to the sum of pleasures, and will add more.

The progress in physical science is part of the progress of the "universal human reason," whose aim is the augmentation of our happiness.

But there are two other sciences which are much more important for the promotion of happiness--Ethics and Politics--and these, neglected by men of genius, have made little way in the course of two thousand years.

It is a grave misfortune that Descartes and Newton did not devote themselves to perfecting these sciences, so incomparably more useful for mankind than those in which they made their great discoveries.

They fell into a prevailing error as to the comparative values of the various domains of knowledge, an error to which we must also ascribe the fact that while Academies of Sciences and Belles-Lettres exist there are no such institutions for Politics or Ethics.
By these arguments he establishes to his own satisfaction that there are no irremovable obstacles to the Progress of the human race towards happiness, no hindrances that could not be overcome if governments only saw eye to eye with the Abbe de Saint-Pierre.