t Discourse, Turgot considers the influence of Christianity
first upon human nature, and secondly on political societies. One
feature at least deserves remark, and this is that in spite both of a
settled partiality, and a certain amount of the common form of theology,
yet at bottom and putting some phrases apart, religion is handled, and
its workings traced, much as they would have been if treated as
admittedly secular forces. And this was somewhat. Let us proceed to
analyse what Turgot says.

1. Before the preaching and acceptance of the new faith, all nations
alike were plunged into the most extravagant superstitions. The most
frightful dissoluteness of manners was encouraged by the example of the
gods themselves. Every passion and nearly every vice was the object of a
monstrous deification. A handful of philosophers existed, who had learnt
no better lesson from their reason, than to despise the multitude of
their fellows. In the midst of the universal contagion, the Jews alone
remained pure. Even the Jews were affected with a narrow and sterile
pride, which proved how little they appreciated the priceless treasure
that was entrusted to their keeping. What were the effects of the
appearance of Christ, and the revelation of the gospel? It inspired men
with a tender zeal for the truth, and by establishing the necessity of a
body of teachers for the instruction of nations, made studiousness and
intellectual application indispensable in a great number of persons.

Consider, again, the obscurity, incertitude, and incongruousness, that
marked the ideas of the wisest of the ancients upon the nature of man
and of God, and the origin of creation; the Ideas of Plato, for
instance, the Numbers of Pythagoras, the theurgic extravagances of
Plotinus and Porphyry and Iamblichus; and then measure the contributions
made by the scholastic theologians, whose dry method has undergone so
much severe condemnation, to the instruments by which knowledge is
enlarged and made accurate. It was the Church, moreover, which
civilised the Northern barbarians, and so preserved the West from the
same barbarism and desolation with which the triumphs of Mahometanism
replaced the knowledge and arts and prosperity of the East. It is to the
services of the Church that we owe the perpetuation of a knowledge of
the ancient tongues, and if this knowledge, and the possession of the
masterpieces of thought and feeling and form, the flower of the ancient
Europ