ter.] It is a survey of the history of the western world and aims at
proving the certainty of future Progress. It betrays the influence both
of the Encyclopaedists and of the Economists. Chastellux is convinced
that human nature can be indefinitely moulded by institutions; that
enlightenment is a necessary condition of general happiness; that war
and superstition, for which governments and priests are responsible, are
the principal obstacles.

But he attempted to do what none of his masters had done, to test the
question methodically from the data of history. Turgot, and Voltaire
in his way, had traced the growth of civilisation; the originality of
Chastellux lay in concentrating attention on the eudaemonic issue, in
examining each historical period for the purpose of discovering whether
people on the whole were happy and enviable. Has there ever been a time,
he inquired, in which public felicity was greater than in our own, in
which it would have been desirable to remain for ever, and to which it
would now be desirable to return?

He begins by brushing away the hypothesis of an Arcadia. We know
really nothing about primitive man, there is not sufficient evidence to
authorise conjectures. We know man only as he has existed in organised
societies, and if we are to condemn modern civilisation and its
prospects, we must find our term of comparison not in an imaginary
golden age but in a known historical epoch. And we must be careful not
to fall into the mistakes of confusing public prosperity with general
happiness, and of considering only the duration or aggrandisement of
empires and ignoring the lot of the common people.

His survey of history is summary and superficial enough. He gives
reasons for believing that no peoples from the ancient Egyptians and
Assyrians to the Europeans of the Renaissance can be judged happy. Yet
what about the Greeks? Theirs was an age of enlightenment. In a few
pages he examines their laws and history, and concludes, "We are
compelled to acknowledge that what is called the bel age of Greece was
a time of pain and torture for humanity." And in ancient history,
generally, "slavery alone sufficed to make man's condition a hundred
times worse than it is at present." The miseries of life in the Roman
period are even more apparent than in the Greek. What Englishman
or Frenchman would tolerate life as lived in ancient Rome? It is
interesting to remember that four years later an Englishman who had