Thus wrote Condorcet, while the hand of Death yet waited. He died; but the return to reason in France was signalized by unaccustomed homage to the victim. The Committee of Public Instruction reported, that the sketch was "a classical work offered to republican schools by an unfortunate philosopher, that everywhere in it the improvement of society was recognized as the object most deserving the activity of the human intelligence, and that pupils studying here the history of the sciences and the arts would learn to cherish liberty and to detest and vanquish all tyrannies"; and thereupon the National Convention ordered three thousand copies to be distributed at the expense of the nation.[257] And here properly closes this branch of our subject. [257] Rapport fait à la Convention Nationale, au Nom du Comité d'Instruction Publique, etc.: OEuvres de Condorcet (ed. O'Connor et Arago, Paris, 1847-49), Tom. VI. pp. 3-5. The high lineage and authority of this law I have traced, not by the enthusiasts of Humanity, not by Fénelon or Saint-Pierre, not by Diderot or Rousseau, but by a succession of masters who are our acknowledged guides in science, philosophy, and history. In Italy the torch was held aloft by Vico; in Germany, by Leibnitz, Lessing, and Herder; in France it passed through the hands of Descartes, Pascal, Perrault, Fontenelle, Turgot, and Condorcet:-- "Et quasi cursores, vitaï lampada tradunt,"[258] till at last, at the close of the eighteenth century, its flame was seen from afar. To England we seem little indebted; and yet, when I think of Lord Bacon, I am disposed to say that we are much indebted. This law inspired his great work on the "Advancement of Learning," and is expressed in its very title. It entered into his aspiration to deliver man from present weakness by extending his power over Nature. It is foreshadowed in his great declaration, antedating Pascal, that Antiquity was the youth of the world,--"_Antiquitas sæculi, juventus mundi_."[259] For a time Bacon had no successors in England. At a later day this law was cordially embraced by Dr. Price,[260] the friend and correspondent of Turgot. Dr. Johnson, who surely did not accept it, shows an unconscious sympathy with it, when he says of life in pastoral countries, that it "knows nothing of progression or advancement."[261] Unhappy people, thus without visible Future on earth! [258] Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Lib. II. 78. [259] De Augmentis Scientiarum, Lib. I.: Works, Vol. IV. p. 34. [260] There is a sermon by Dr. Price, published in 1787, on _The Evidence of a Future Period of Improvement in the State of Mankind_. [261] Journey to the Hebrides: Works (Oxford, 1825), Vol. IX. p. 98.