en, the lines of communication which have been established
among them, the great number of those who study them, and finally
the art of printing. And if we are sure of the continuous progress of
enlightenment, we may be sure of the continuous improvement of social
conditions.

It is possible to foresee events, if the general laws of social
phenomena are known, and these laws can be inferred from the history
of the past. By this statement Condorcet justifies his bold attempt to
sketch his tenth period of human history which lies in the future; and
announces the idea which was in the next generation to be worked out by
Comte. But he cannot be said to have deduced himself any law of social
development. His forecast of the future is based on the ideas and
tendencies of his own age. [Footnote: It is interesting to notice
that the ablest of medieval Arabic historians, Ibn Khaldun (fourteenth
century), had claimed that if history is scientifically studied future
events may be predicted.]

Apart from scientific discoveries and the general diffusion of a
knowledge of the laws of nature on which moral improvement depends,
he includes in his prophetic vision the cessation of war and the
realisation of the less familiar idea of the equality of the sexes. If
he were alive to-day, he could point with triumph to the fact that of
these far-reaching projects one is being accomplished in some of the
most progressive countries and the other is looked upon as an attainable
aim by statesmen who are not visionaries. The equality of the sexes was
only a logical inference from the general doctrine of equality to which
Condorcet's social theory is reducible. For him the goal of political
progress is equality; equality is to be the aim of social effort--the
ideal of the Revolution.

For it is the multitude of men that must be considered--the mass of
workers, not the minority who live on their labours. Hitherto they have
been neglected by the historian as well as by the statesman. The true
history of humanity is not the history of some men. The human race is
formed by the mass of families who subsist almost entirely on the fruits
of their own work, and this mass is the proper subject of history, not
great men.

You may establish social equality by means of laws and institutions,
yet the equality actually enjoyed may be very incomplete. Condorcet
recognises this and attributes it to three principal causes: inequality
in wealth; inequality in