lux follows the Economists--in external
and domestic peace, abundance and liberty, the liberty of tranquil
enjoyment of one's own; and ordinary signs of it are flourishing
agriculture, large populations, and the growth of trade and industry.
He is at pains to show the superiority of modern to ancient agriculture,
and he avails himself of the researches of Hume to prove the
comparatively greater populousness of modern European countries. As for
the prospect of peace, he takes a curiously optimistic view. A system
of alliances has made Europe a sort of confederated republic, and the
balance of power has rendered the design of a universal monarchy, such
as that which Louis XIV. essayed, a chimera. [Footnote: So Rivarol,
writing in 1783 (OEuvres, i. pp. 4 and 52): "Never did the world offer
such a spectacle. Europe has reached such a high degree of power that
history has nothing to compare with it. It is virtually a federative
republic, composed of empires and kingdoms, and the most powerful that
has ever existed."] All the powerful nations are burdened with debt.
War, too, is a much more difficult enterprise than it used to be; every
campaign of the king of Prussia has been more arduous than all the
conquests of Attila. It looks as if the Peace of 1762-3 possessed
elements of finality. The chief danger he discerns in the overseas
policy of the English--auri sacra fames. Divination of this kind has
never been happy; a greater thinker, Auguste Comte, was to venture on
more dogmatic predictions of the cessation of wars, which the event was
no less utterly to belie. As for equality among men, Chastellux admits
its desirability, but observes that there is pretty much the same amount
of happiness (le bonheur se compense assez) in the different classes of
society. "Courtiers and ministers are not happier than husbandmen and
artisans." Inequalities and disportions in the lots of individuals
are not incompatible with a positive measure of felicity. They are
inconveniences incident to the perfectibility of the species, and they
will be eliminated only when Progress reaches its final term. The best
that can be done to remedy them is to accelerate the Progress of the
race which will conduct it one day to the greatest possible happiness;
not to restore a state of ignorance and simplicity, from which it would
again escape.

The general argument of the book may be resumed briefly. Felicity has
never been realised in any period of the pas