His famous letter to Berthelot includes a brief statement of his views on progressive culture, which, for him, constitutes the sign of progress. “One ought never,” he writes, “to regret seeing clearer into the depths.” By endeavouring to increase the treasure of the truths which form the paid-up capital of humanity, we shall be carrying on the work of our pious ancestors, who loved the good and the true as it was understood in their time. The true men of progress, he claims, are those who profess as their starting-point a profound respect for the past. Renan himself was a great lover of the past, yet we find him remarking in his _Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse_ that he has no wish to be taken for an uncompromising reactionist. “I love the past, but I envy the future,” and he thinks that it would be extremely pleasant to live upon this planet at as late a period as possible. He appears jealous of the future and of the young, whose fate it will be to know what will be the outcome of the activities of the German Emperor, what will be the climax of the conflict of European nationalities, what development socialism will take. His shrewd mind had alreadv foreseen in a measure the possible development of German militarism and of Bolshevism. He regards the world as moving towards a kind of “Americanism,” by which he means a type of life in which culture and refinement shall have little place. Yet, although he has a horror and a dread of democracy, he feels also that the evils accompanying it may be, after all, no worse than those involved in the reactionary dominance of nobles and clergy. Humanity has not hitherto marched, he thinks, with much method. Order he considers to be desirable, but only in view of progress. Revolutions are only absurd and odious, he asserts in _L’Avenir de la Science_, to those who do not believe in progress. Yet he claims that reaction has its place in the plan of Providence, for it works unwittingly for the general good. “There are,” to quote his metaphor, “declivities down which the _rôle_ of the traction engine consists solely in holding back.”