tical distribution of power was perfectly satisfactory and
conformable to the best interests of all the peoples concerned. It would
have hindered the Partition of Poland, but it would have maintained the
Austrian oppression of Italians. The project also secured to the sovrans
the heritage of their authority and guarded against civil wars. This
assumed that the various existing constitutions were fundamentally just.
The realisation of the scheme would have perpetuated all the evils of
autocratic governments. Its author did not perceive that the radical
evil in France was irresponsible power. It needed the reign of Louis XV.
and the failure of attempts at reform under his successor to bring this
home. The Abbe even thought that an increase of the despotic authority
of the government was desirable, provided this were accompanied by an
increase in the enlightenment and virtue of its ministers.

In 1729 he published an abridgment of his scheme, and here he looks
beyond its immediate results to its value for distant posterity. No one,
he says, can imagine or foresee the advantages which such an alliance
of European states will yield to Europe five hundred years after its
establishment. Now we can see the first beginnings, but it is beyond the
powers of the human mind to discern its infinite effects in the future.
It may produce results more precious than anything hitherto experienced
by man. He supports his argument by observing that our primitive
ancestors could not foresee the improvements which the course of ages
would bring in their rudimentary arrangements for securing social order.

3.

It is characteristic that the Abbe de Saint-Pierre's ideas about
Progress were a by-product of his particular schemes. In 1773 he
published a Project to Perfect the Government of States, and here he
sketched his view of the progressive course of civilisation. The old
legend of the golden age, when men were perfectly happy, succeeded by
the ages of silver, bronze, and iron, exactly reverses the truth of
history. The age of iron came first, the infancy of society, when men
were poor and ignorant of the arts; it is the present condition of the
savages of Africa and America. The age of bronze ensued, in which there
was more security, better laws, and the invention of the most necessary
arts began. There followed the age of silver, and Europe has not yet
emerged from it. Our reason has indeed reached the point of considering
how war may be