A conception of this kind could not be appreciated in Vico's day or by the next generation. The "Scienza nuova" lay in Montesquieu's library, and he made no use of it. But it was natural that it should arouse interest in France at a time when the new idealistic philosophies of Germany were attracting attention, and when Frenchmen, of the ideological school, were seeking, like Vico himself, a synthetic principle to explain social phenomena. Different though Vico was in his point of departure as in his methods from the German idealists, his speculations nevertheless had something in common with theirs. Both alike explained history by the nature of mind which necessarily determined the stages of the process; Vico as little as Fichte or Hegel took eudaemonic considerations into account. The difference was that the German thinkers sought their principle in logic and applied it a priori, while Vico sought his in concrete psychology and engaged in laborious research to establish it a posteriori by the actual data of history. But both speculations suggested that the course of human development corresponds to the fundamental character of mental processes and is not diverted either by Providential intervention or by free acts of human will. 5. These foreign influences co-operated in determining the tendencies of French speculation in the period of the restored monarchy, whereby the idea of Progress was placed on new basements and became the headstone of new "religions." Before we consider the founders of sects, we may glance briefly at the views of some eminent savants who had gained the ear of the public before the July Revolution--Jouffroy, Cousin, and Guizot.