But here we observe the persistence and the potency of Christian and theological thought. The progress so much discussed was, so to speak, a progress without _development,_ manifesting itself chiefly in a sigh of satisfaction and security, as of one, favoured by fortune, who has successfully encountered many obstacles and now looks serenely upon the present, secure as to the future, with mind averted from the past, or returning to it now and then for a brief moment only, in order to lament its ugliness, to despise and to smile at it. Take as an example of all the most intelligent and at the same time the best of the historical representatives of enlightenment M. de Voltaire, who wrote his _Essai sur les mœurs_ in order to aid his friend the Marquise du Châtelet to _surmonter le dégoût_ caused her by _l'histoire moderne depuis la décadence de l'Empire romain,_ treating the subject in a satirical vein. Or take Condorcet's work, _l'Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain,_ which appears at its end like a last will and testament (and also as the testament of the man who wrote it), and where we find the whole century in compendium. It is as happy in the present, even in the midst of the slaughters of the Revolution, as rosy in its views as to the future, as it is full of contempt and sarcasm for the past, which had generated that present. The felicity of the period upon which they were entering was clearly stated. Voltaire says that at this time _les hommes ont acquis plus de lumières d'un bout de l'Europe à l'autre que dans tous les âges précédents._ Man now brandishes the arm which none can resist: _la seule arme contre le monstre, c'est la Raison: la seule manière d'empêcher les hommes d'être absurdes et méchants, c'est de les éclairer; pour rendre le fanatisme exécrable, il ne faut que le peindre._ Certainly it was not denied that there had been something of good and beautiful in the past. They must have existed, if they suffered from superstition and oppression. _On voit dans l'histoire les erreurs et les préjugés se succéder tour à tour, et chasser la vérité et la raison: on voit les habiles et les heureux enchaîner les imbéciles et écraser les infortunés; et encore ces habiles et ces heureux sont eux-mêmes les jouets de la fortune, ainsi quelles esclaves qu'ils gouvernent._ And not only had the good existed, though oppressed, but it had also been efficient in a certain measure: _au milieu de ces saccagements et de ces destructions nous voyons un amour de l'ordre qui anime en secret le genre humain et qui a prévenu sa ruine totale: c'est un des ressorts de la nature, qui reprend toujours sa force...._ And then the 'great epochs' must not be forgotten, the 'centuries' in which the arts nourished as the result of the work of wise men and monarchs, les quatre âges heureux of history. But between this sporadic good, weak or acting covertly, or appearing only for a time and then disappearing, and that of the new era, the