Pascal,  who  first  expressed  the  philosophical  conception  of  human
progress  in  the  maxim  which  I  quoted  before,  certainly  derived  it
from  the  general  history  of  the  mathematical  sciences.  The  inno-
vation however  could  not  produce  any  eifect  while  only  one  kind  of
evolution  was  studied ;  for  two  are  required  for  generalization  on
the  simplest  subjects  of  speculation ;  and  then  a  third  case  is  indis-
pensable to  confirm  the  prior  comparison.  The  first  condition  was
fulfilled  through  the  evident  conformity  between  scientific  and  in-
dustrial progression ;  but  no  third  case  was  ready :  for  the  spirit  of
the  times  caused  a  strange  misjudgment  of  the  merit  of  the  aesthetic
movement,  which  was  supposed  to  be  retrograde  when  it  was  much
otherwise.  From  a  comparison  of  modern  with  ancient  Art,  the
discussion  extended  to  other  social  aspects,  and  the  result  was  that,
though  the  original  question  remained  doubtful,  the  idea  of  human
progress,  sustained  by  the  universal  instinct  of  modern  civilization,
was  established  as  systematically  as  it  could  be  before  the  clearing
up  of  the  apparent  anomaly  of  the  Middle  Ages, — a  difficulty  which
I  may  hope  to  have  now  removed.  Political  Econotny  afforded  an
indirect  aid  toward  the  close  of  the  period,  by  fixing  general  atten-
tion on  the  industrial  life  of  modern  society,  and  by  marking  out
the  temporal  differences  between  our  civilization  and  that  of  the
ancients,  which  again  favored  a  political  understanding  of  the  inter-
mediate social  state,  according  to  the  logical  rule  that  a  mean  con-
dition can  be  judged  of  only  from  a  comparison  of  the  extremes.
We  have  seen  the  result  in  the  enterprises  of  Turgot,  Condorcet,
and  Montesquieu,  whose  merits  and  imperfections  I  pointed  out  in
the  first  chapter  of  this  book.
