countries the difference in enlightenment
between the lowest classes will correspond to the difference between the
most highly educated classes. At present, he says, Paris and London are
the places where human wisdom has reached the most advanced stage. It
is certain that the ten best men of the highest class at Ispahan or
Constantinople will be inferior in their knowledge of politics and
ethics to the ten most distinguished sages of Paris or London. And this
will be true in all classes. The thirty most intelligent children of the
age of fourteen at Paris will be more enlightened than the thirty most
intelligent children of the same age at Constantinople, and the same
proportional difference will be true of the lowest classes of the two
cities.

But while the progress of speculative reason has been rapid, practical
reason--the distinction is the Abbe's--has made little advance. In point
of morals and general happiness the world is apparently much the same
as ever. Our mediocre savants know twenty times as much as Socrates and
Confucius, but our most virtuous men are not more virtuous than they.
The growth of science has added much to the arts and conveniences of
life, and to the sum of pleasures, and will add more. The progress
in physical science is part of the progress of the "universal human
reason," whose aim is the augmentation of our happiness. But there are
two other sciences which are much more important for the promotion of
happiness--Ethics and Politics--and these, neglected by men of genius,
have made little way in the course of two thousand years. It is a
grave misfortune that Descartes and Newton did not devote themselves to
perfecting these sciences, so incomparably more useful for mankind
than those in which they made their great discoveries. They fell into a
prevailing error as to the comparative values of the various domains of
knowledge, an error to which we must also ascribe the fact that while
Academies of Sciences and Belles-Lettres exist there are no such
institutions for Politics or Ethics.

By these arguments he establishes to his own satisfaction that there
are no irremovable obstacles to the Progress of the human race towards
happiness, no hindrances that could not be overcome if governments only
saw eye to eye with the Abbe de Saint-Pierre. Superstition is already
on the decline; there would be no more wars if his simple scheme for
permanent peace were adopted. Let the State immediately found