n to take the helm.

Thus, while Turgot might have subscribed to Voltaire's assertion that
history is largely "un ramas de crimes, de folies, et de malheurs," his
view of the significance of man's sufferings is different and almost
approaches the facile optimism of Pope--"whatever is, is right." He
regards all the race's actual experiences as the indispensable mechanism
of Progress, and does not regret its mistakes and calamities. Many
changes and revolutions, he observes, may seem to have had most
mischievous effects; yet every change has brought some advantage, for
it has been a new experience and therefore has been instructive.
Man advances by committing errors. The history of science shows (as
Fontenelle had pointed out) that truth is reached over the ruins of
false hypotheses.

The difficulty presented by periods of decadence and barbarism
succeeding epochs of enlightenment is met by the assertion that in
such dark times the world has not stood still; there has really been a
progression which, though relatively inconspicuous, is not unimportant.
In the Middle Ages, which are the prominent case, there were
improvements in mechanical arts, in commerce, in some of the habits of
civil life, all of which helped to prepare the way for happier times.
Here Turgot's view of history is sharply opposed to Voltaire's. He
considers Christianity to have been a powerful agent of civilisation,
not a hinderer or an enemy. Had he executed his design, his work might
well have furnished a notable makeweight to the view held by Voltaire,
and afterwards more judicially developed by Gibbon, that "the triumph of
barbarism and religion" was a calamity for the world.

Turgot also propounded two laws of development. He observed that when a
people is progressing, every step it takes causes an acceleration in the
rate of progress. And he anticipated Comte's famous "law" of the three
stages of intellectual evolution, though without giving it the extensive
and fundamental significance which Comte claimed for it. "Before man
understood the causal connection of physical phenomena, nothing was
so natural as to suppose they were produced by intelligent beings,
invisible and resembling ourselves; for what else would they have
resembled?" That is Comte's theological stage. "When philosophers
recognised the absurdity of the fables about the gods, but had not yet
gained an insight into natural history, they thought to explain the
causes of phenomena