The austere Pascal has said: "On ne voit rien de juste ou d'injuste qui ne change de qualite en changeant de climat" (the reading _presque_ rien was the precaution of an editor). The same underlying scepticism is found not only in philosophers of the Titanic sort, to whom remorse is a prejudice of education, and the moral virtues are "the political offspring which flattery begat upon pride," but among the masters of living thought. Locke, according to Mr. Bain, holds that we shall scarcely find any rule of morality, excepting such as are necessary to hold society together, and these too with great limitations, but what is somewhere or other set aside, and an opposite established by whole societies of men. Maine de Biran extracts this conclusion from the _Esprit des Lois_: "Il n'y a rien d'absolu ni dans la religion, ni dans la morale, ni, a plus forte raison, dans la politique." In the mercantile economists Turgot detects the very doctrine of Helvetius: "Il etablit qu'il n'y a pas lieu a la probite entre les nations, d'ou suivroit que la monde doit etre eternellement un coupe-gorge. En quoi il est bien d'accord avec les panegyristes de Colbert." These things survive, transmuted, in the edifying and popular epigram: "Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht." Lacordaire, though he spoke so well of "L'empire et les ruses de la duree," recorded his experience in these words: "J'ai toujours vu Dieu se justifier a la longue." Reuss, a teacher of opposite tendency and greater name, is equally consoling: "Les destinees de l'homme s'accomplissent ici-bas; la justice de Dieu s'exerce et se manifeste sur cette terre." In the infancy of exact observation Massillon could safely preach that wickedness ends in ignominy: "Dieu aura son tour." The indecisive Providentialism of Bossuet's countrymen is shared by English divines. "Contemporaries," says Hare, "look at the agents, at their motives and characters; history looks rather at the acts and their consequences." Thirlwall hesitates to say that whatever is, is best; "but I have a strong faith that it is for the best, and that the general stream of tendency is toward good." And Sedgwick, combining induction with theology, writes: "If there be a superintending Providence, and if His will be manifested by general laws, operating both on the physical and moral world, then must a violation of those laws be a violation of His will, and be pregnant with inevitable misery."