fame as the foremost of
living writers, was content to contemplate the past, there was a
student in the Paris seminary who taught men to fix hope and
endeavour on the future, and led the world at twenty-three. Turgot,
when he proclaimed that upward growth and progress is the law of human
life, was studying to become a priest. To us, in an age of science, it
has become difficult to imagine Christianity without the attribute of
development and the faculty of improving society as well as souls. But
the idea was acquired slowly. Under the burden of sin, men accustomed
themselves to the consciousness of degeneracy; each generation
confessed that they were unworthy children of their parents, and
awaited with impatience the approaching end. From Lucretius and Seneca
to Pascal and Leibniz we encounter a few dispersed and unsupported
passages, suggesting advance towards perfection, and the flame that
brightens as it moves from hand to hand; but they were without mastery
or radiance. Turgot at once made the idea habitual and familiar, and
it became a pervading force in thoughtful minds, whilst the new
sciences arose to confirm it. He imparted a deeper significance to
history, giving it unity of tendency and direction, constancy where
there had been motion, and development instead of change. The progress
he meant was moral as much as intellectual; and as he professed to
think that the rogues of his day would have seemed sanctified models
to an earlier century, he made his calculations without counting the
wickedness of men. His analysis left unfathomed depths for future
explorers, for Lessing and still more for Hegel; but he taught mankind
to expect that the future would be unlike the past, that it would be
better, and that the experience of ages may instruct and warn, but
cannot guide or control. He is eminently a benefactor to historical
study; but he forged a weapon charged with power to abolish the
product of history and the existing order. By the hypothesis of
progress, the new is always gaining on the old; history is the
embodiment of imperfection, and escape from history became the
watchword of the coming day. Condorcet, the master's pupil, thought
that the world might be emancipated by burning its records.

Turgot was too discreet for such an excess, and he looked to history
for the demonstration of his law. He had come upon it in his
theological studies. He renounced them soon after, saying that he
could not wear a mask.