principles of societies, the rights of men, political constitutions,
legislation, administration, physical education, the means of perfecting
the human race relatively to the progressive advance and employment of
their forces, to the happiness of which they are susceptible, to the
extent of the knowledge to which they may attain, to the certainty,
clearness, and simplicity of the principles of conduct, to the purity of
the feelings that spring up in men's souls.' While his mind was moving
through these immense spaces of thought, he did not forget the things of
the hour. He invented a machine for serving ship's cables. He wrote a
plea for allowing Captain Cook's vessel to remain unmolested during the
American war. With Adam Smith, with Dr. Price, with Franklin, with Hume,
he kept up a grave and worthy correspondence. Of his own countrymen,
Condorcet was his most faithful friend and disciple, and it is much to
Condorcet's credit that this was so, for Turgot never gave way to the
passionate impulses of the philosophic school against what Voltaire
called the Infamous, that is to say, against the Church, her doctrines,
her morality, her history.

We have already said that the keyword to Turgot's political aims and
social theory was not Pity nor Benevolence, but Justice. It was Justice
also, not temporary Prejudice nor Passion, that guided his judgment
through the heated issues of the time. This justice and exact
reasonableness it was impossible to surprise or throw off its guard. His
sublime intellectual probity never suffered itself to be tempted. He
protested against the doctrines of Helvetius's book, _de l'Esprit_, and
of D'Holbach's _Systeme de la Nature_, at a moment when some of his best
friends were enthusiastic in admiration, for no better reason than that
the doctrines of the two books were hateful to the ecclesiastics and
destructive of the teaching of the Church. In the course of a
discussion, Condorcet had maintained that in general scrupulous persons
are not fit for great things: a Christian, he said, will waste in
subduing the darts of the flesh time that he might have employed upon
things that would have been useful to humanity; he will never venture to
rise against tyrants, for fear of having formed a hasty judgment, and so
forth in other cases. 'No virtue,' replies Turgot, 'in whatever sense
you take the word, can dispense with justice; and I think no better of
the people who do your _great things_ at the c