enesis, notwithstanding all the ancient opinions and
traditions that the researches of Leroux might muster, could carry
little conviction to those who were ceasing to believe in the familiar
doctrine of a future life detached from earth, and Madame Dudevant was
his only distinguished convert.

5.

The ascendency of the idea of Progress among thoughtful people in France
in the middle of the last century is illustrated by the work which
Ernest Renan composed under the immediate impression of the events
of 1848. He desired to understand the significance of the current
revolutionary doctrines, and was at once involved in speculation on
the future of humanity. This is the purport of L'AVENIR DE LA SCIENCE.
[Footnote: L'Avenir de la science--Pensees de (1848). Published in
1890.]

[Footnote: The ascendency of the idea of Progress at this epoch may be
further illustrated by E. Pelletan's Profession de foi du dix-neuvieme
siecle, 1852 (4th ed., 1857), where Progress is described as the general
law of the universe; and by Jean Reynaud's Philosophie religieuse:
Terre et ciel (3rd ed., 1858), a religious but not orthodox book, which
acclaims the "sovran principle of perfectibility" (cp. p. 138). I may
refer also to the rhetorical pages of E. Vacherot on the Doctrine du
progres, printed (as part of an essay on the Philosophy of History) in
his Essais de philosophie critique (1864).]

The author was then convinced that history has a goal, and that mankind
tends perpetually, though in an oscillating line, towards a more perfect
state, through the growing dominion of reason over instinct and caprice.
He takes the French Revolution as the critical moment in which humanity
first came to know itself. That revolution was the first attempt of man
to take the reins into his own hands. All that went before we may call,
with Owen, the irrational period of human existence.

We have now come to a point at which we must choose between two faiths.
If we despair of reason, we may find a refuge from utter scepticism in
a belief in the external authority of the Roman Church. If we trust
reason, we must accept the march of the human mind and justify the
modern spirit. And it can be justified only by proving that it is a
necessary step towards perfection. Renan affirmed his belief in
the second alternative, and felt confident that science--including
philology, on the human bearings of which he enlarged,--philosophy, and
art would ultimately enab