progress of the human intelligence, or the
knowing part of the mind, the omission of the whole moral side is still
a defect. For as he interprets knowledge to be the conformity of our
ideas to facts, has there not been a clearly recognisable progress in
the improved conformity of our ideas to the most momentous facts of all,
the various circumstances of human action, its motives and
consequences? No factor among the constituents of a progressive
civilisation deserves more carefully to be taken into account, than the
degree in which the current opinion and usage of a society recognise the
comprehensiveness of moral obligation. More than upon anything else,
does progress depend on the kinds of conduct which a community
classifies as moral or immoral, and upon the wider or narrower
inclusiveness within rigid ethical boundaries of what ought or ought not
to be left open and indifferent. The conditions which create and modify
these ethical regulations,--their law in a word,--form a department of
the history of the human mind, which can be almost less readily
dispensed with than any other. What sort of a history of Europe would
that be, which should omit, for example, to consider the influence of
the moral rigour of Calvinism upon the growth of the nations affected by
it?

Moreover, Turgot expressly admits the ever-present wants of society to
be the stimulating agents, as well as the guides, of scientific energy.
He expressly admits, too, that they are constantly plucking men by the
skirt, and forcing them back to social rules of conduct. It is certain,
therefore, that as the necessities of society increase in number and
complexity, morality will be developed to correspond with them, and the
way in which new applications of ethical sentiments to the demands of
the common weal are made, is as interesting and as deserving of a place
in any scientific inquiry into social progress, as the new applications
of physical truths to satisfy material needs and to further material
convenience. Turgot justly points to the perfecting of language as one
of the most important of the many processes that go to the general
advancement of the race.[42] Not less, but more, important is the
analogous work of perfecting our ideas of virtue and duty. Surely this
chamber, too, in the great laboratory deserves that the historian should
unseal its door and explore its recesses.

[Footnote 42: P. 603.]

The characteristic merits of the second of the