eous effects upon the happiness of
the whole mass of the human race. In short, the end of the speculation
is a confirmed and heightened conviction of the indefinite
perfectibility of the species, with certain foreshadowings of the
direction which this perfectibility would ultimately follow. The same
rebellion against the disorder and misery of the century, which drove
some thinkers and politicians into fierce yearnings for an imaginary
state of nature, and others into an extravagant admiration for the
ancient republics, caused a third school, and Condorcet among them, to
turn their eyes with equally boundless confidence and yearning towards
an imaginary future. It was at all events the least desperate error of
the three.

Our expectations for the future, Condorcet held, may be reduced to these
three points: the destruction of inequality among nations; the progress
of equality among the people of any given nation; and, finally the
substantial perfecting (_perfectionnement reel_) of man.

I. With reference to the first of these great aspirations, it will be
brought about by the abandonment by European peoples of their commercial
monopolies, their treacherous practices, their mischievous and
extravagant proselytising, and their sanguinary contempt for those of
another colour or another creed. Vast countries, now a prey to barbarism
and violence, will present in one region numerous populations only
waiting to receive the means and instruments of civilisation from us,
and as soon as they find brothers in the Europeans, will joyfully become
their friends and pupils; and in another region, nations enslaved under
the yoke of despots or conquerors, crying aloud for so many ages for
liberators. In yet other regions, it is true, there are tribes almost
savage, cut off by the harshness of their climate from a perfected
civilisation, or else conquering hordes, ignorant of every law but
violence and every trade but brigandage. The progress of these last two
descriptions of people will naturally be more tardy, and attended by
more storm and convulsion. It is possible even, that reduced in number,
in proportion as they see themselves repulsed by civilised nations, they
will end by insensibly disappearing.[75] It is perhaps a little hard to
expect Esquimaux or the barbaric marauders of the sandy expanses of
Central Asia insensibly to disappear, lest by their cheerless presence
they should destroy the unity and harmony of the transforma