THANKS to the fully worked out optimistic-ethical world-view with which the belief in progress surrounds itself in the course of the eighteenth century, these generations prove capable of thinking out the ideals of civilization and advancing towards their realization. The fact that all attempts to give ethics a foundation in reason have turned out on the whole unsatisfactory does not move them, if indeed they give the point any consideration at all. By the conviction that they have formed a rational conception of the world which gives it an optimistic-ethical meaning, they are carried on over all the inner problems of ethics. The alliance which belief-in-progress and ethics have in the course of modern times contracted with one another is sealed by means of their world-view, and now they set to work together. Rational ideals are to be realized. The ethical and the optimistic come into power, therefore, in the world-view of the eighteenth century, although they have not yet received any real foundation. Scepticism and materialism range around the fortress like hordes of unconquered enemies, though at first without being dangerous; as a rule they have themselves absorbed no small amount of belief-in-progress and of ethical enthusiasm. Voltaire is an example of the sceptic who stands under the restraint exercised by the prevalent optimistic and ethical thought. So far as its elements are concerned the world-view of rationalism hides itself under the optimistic-ethical monism [pg 091] of Kungtse (Confucius) and the Later Stoics, but the enthusiasm which supports it is incomparably stronger than any felt by them. The circumstances, too, amid which it appears are far more favourable, and so it becomes an elemental power throughout a whole people. In a world-view which springs from a noble faith, but is remarkable also for the extent of its knowledge, the men of the eighteenth century begin to think out ideals of civilization and to realise them in such measure that the greatest epoch in the history of human civilization now dawns. The great feature of the mentality of this belief in progress which is ever showing itself in works is its magnificent want of respect for all existing things, whether belonging to the past or the present. These are to it in all their various forms the imperfect, which is destined to be replaced by a perfect.