That this conception involves an assumption about tendencies and final purposes which reverses the true method of history, and moreover reduces what ought to be a scientific inquiry to be a foregone justification of nature or providence, should not prevent us from appreciating its signal merits in insisting on a systematic presentation of the collective activity of the race, and in pointing out, however cursorily, the use of such an elucidation of the past in furnishing the grounds of practical guidance in dealing with the future and in preparing it. Considering the brevity of this little tract, its pregnancy and suggestiveness have not often been equalled. We have seen enough of it here to enable us to realise the differences between this and the French school. We miss the wholesome objectivity, resulting from the stage which had been reached in France by the physical sciences. Condorcet's series of _éloges_ shows unmistakably how deep an impression the history of physical discovery had made upon him, and how clearly he understood the value of its methods. The peculiar study which their composition had occasioned him is of itself almost enough to account for the fact that a conception which had long been preparing in the superior minds of the time, should fully develop itself in him rather than in anybody else. FOOTNOTES: [42] Quesnay; _Droit Naturel_, ch. v. _Les Physiocrates_, i. 52. [43] _Economistes Financiers du 18ième Siècle._ Vauban's _Projet d'une Dime Royale_ (p. 33), and Boisguillebert's _Factum de la France_, etc. (p. 248 _et seq._) [44] De la Rivière, for instance, very notably. Cf. his _Ordre Naturel des Sociétés Politiques_. _Physiocrates_, ii. 469, 636, etc. See also Baudeau on the superiority of the Economic Monarchy _Ib._ pp. 783-791. [45] _Ordre Nat. des Soc. Pol._ p. 526. [46] Bk. i. 23. [47] _Hist._ i. 4. [48] Polyb. _Hist._ I. iii. 4; iv. 3, 7. [49] The well-known words of Thucydides may contain the germ of the same idea, when he speaks of the future as being likely to represent again, after the fashion of human things, 'if not the very image, yet the near resemblance of the past.' Bk. i. 22, 4. [50] _Discours en Sorbonne._ _Œuv. de Turgot_, ii. 597. (Ed. of 1844). [51] Cf. Sir G. C. Lewis's _Methods of Observation in Politics_, ii. 439, note. [52] _Œuv. de Turgot_, ii. 599, 645, etc. [53] _Ib._ ii. 601. [54] _Esprit des Lois_, xvi. cc. 2-4. And _Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle_, in Turgot's Works, ii. 640, 641. For a further account of Turgot's speculations, see article "Turgot" in the present volume. [55] _Idea of a Universal History on a Cosmo-Political Plan._ It was translated by De Quincey, and is to be found in vol. xiii. of his collected works, pp. 133-152. V.