It would have embodied in a digested form the ideas of Montesquieu to which Voltaire paid little attention, and the author would have elaborated the intimate connection and mutual interaction among all social phenomena--government and morals, religion, science, and arts.

While his general thesis coincided with that of Voltaire--the gradual advance of humanity towards a state of enlightenment and reasonableness,--he made the idea of Progress more vital; for him it was an organising conception, just as the idea of Providence was for St.Augustine and Bossuet an organising conception, which gave history its unity and meaning.

The view that man has throughout been blindly moving in the right direction is the counterpart of what Bossuet represented as a divine plan wrought out by the actions of men who are ignorant of it, and is sharply opposed to the views, of Voltaire and the other philosophers of the day who ascribed Progress exclusively to human reason consciously striving against ignorance and passion..