That the notion of progress was conspicuous in the thought of this time is very evident. It was, indeed, in the foreground, and a host of writers testify to this, whom we cannot do much more than mention here. A number of them figured in the events of 1848. The social reformers all invoked “Progress” as justification for their theories being put into action. Bazard took up the ideas of Saint-Simon and expounded them in his _Exposition de la Doctrine saint-simonienne_ (1830). Buchez, in his work on the philosophy of history, assumed progress (1833). The work of Louis Blanc on _L’Organisation du Travail_ appeared in 1839 in a periodical calling itself _Revue des Progrès_. The brochure from Proudhon, on property, came in 1840, and was followed later by _La Philosophie du Progrès_ (1851). Meanwhile Fourier’s _Théorie des Quatre Mouvements et des Destinées générales_ attempted in rather a fantastic manner to point the road to progress. Worthless as many of his quaint pages are, they were a severe indictment of much in the existing order, and helped to increase the interest and the faith in progress. Fourier’s disciple, Considérant, was a prominent figure in 1848. The Utopia proposed by Cabet insisted upon _fraternité_ as the keynote to progress, while the volumes of Pierre Leroux, _De l’Humanité_, which appeared in the same year as Cabet’s volume, 1840, emphasised _égalité_ as the essential factor. His humanitarianism influenced the woman-novelist, George Sand. This same watchword of the Revolution had been eulogised by De Tocqueville in his important study of the American Republic in 1834, and that writer had claimed _égalité_ as the goal of human progress. All these men take progress as an undoubted fact; they only vary by using a different one of the three watchwords, _Liberté_, _Egalité_, _Fraternité_, to denote the kind of progress they mean. Meanwhile, Michelet and his friend Quinet combated the Hegelian conception of history maintained by Cousin, and they claimed _liberté_ to be the watchword of progress. The confidence of all in progress is almost pathetic in its unqualified optimism. It is not remarkable that the events of 1851 proved a rude shock. Javary, a writer who, in 1850, published a little work, _De l’Idée du Progrès_, claimed that the idea is the supremely interesting question of the time in its relation to a general philosophy of history and to the ultimate destiny of mankind. This is fairly evident from the writers we have cited, without Javary’s remark, but it is worth noting as being the observation of a contemporary. With the mention of Reynaud’s _Philosophie religieuse_, upholding the principle of indefinite perfectability and Pelletan’s _Profession du Foi du XIXe Siècle_, wherein he maintained confidently and dogmatically that progress is the general law of the universe, we must pass on from these minor people to consider one who had a profounder influence on the latter half of the century, and who took