nd made the approach to that ideal the
measure of Progress. The most significant process in history, he held,
is the gradual breaking down of caste and class: the process is now
approaching its completion; "today MAN is synonymous with EQUAL."

In order to advance to the city of the future we must have a force and
a lever. Man is the force, and the lever is the idea of Progress. It is
supplied by the study of history which displays the improvement of our
faculties, the increase of our power over nature, the possibility of
organising society more efficaciously. But the force and the lever are
not enough. A fulcrum is also required, and this is to be found in the
"solidarity" of the human race. But this conception meant for Leroux
something different from what is ordinarily meant by the phrase, a
deeper and even mystical bond. Human "solidarity" was a corollary from
the pantheistic religion of the Saint-Simonians, but with Leroux,
as with Fourier, it was derived from the more difficult doctrine of
palingenesis. We of this generation, he believed, are not merely the
sons and descendants of past generations, we are the past generations
themselves, which have come to birth again in us.

Through many pages of the two volumes [Footnote: De l'humanite, 1840
(dedicated to Beranger).] in which he set forth his thesis, Leroux
expended much useless learning in endeavouring to establish this
doctrine, which, were it true, might be the central principle in a
new religion of humanity, a transformed Pythagoreanism. It is easy to
understand the attractiveness of palingenesis to a believer in Progress:
for it would provide a solution of the anomaly that generations after
generations are sacrificed for the sake of posterity, and so appear to
have no value in themselves. Believers in Progress, who are sensitive to
the sufferings of mankind, past and present, need a stoical resolution
to face this fact. We saw how Herder refused to accept it. A pantheistic
faith, like that of the Saint-Simonian Church, may help some, it cannot
do more, to a stoical acquiescence. The palingenesis of Leroux or
Fourier removes the radical injustice. The men of each generation are
sacrificed and suffer for the sake of their descendants, but as their
descendants are themselves come to life again, they are really suffering
in their own interests. They will themselves reach the desirable state
to which the slow, painful process of history is tending.

But paling