But his significance in the development of the revolutionary ideas which were to gain control in the second half of the eighteenth century has hardly been appreciated yet, and it was imperfectly appreciated by his contemporaries.
It is easy to see why.

His theories are buried in his multitudinous projets.

If, instead of working out the details of endless particular reforms, he had built up general theories of government and society, economics and education, they might have had no more intrinsic value, but he would have been recognised as the precursor of the Encyclopaedists.
For his principles are theirs.

The omnipotence of government and laws to mould the morals of peoples; the subordination of all knowledge to the goddess of utility; the deification of human reason; and the doctrine of Progress.

His crude utilitarianism led him to depreciate the study of mathematical and physical sciences--notwithstanding his veneration for Descartes--as comparatively useless, and he despised the fine arts as waste of time and toil which might be better spent.