His inability to appreciate the historical role of the Roman Empire exhibits more surprising ignorance and prejudice.

But these particular defects are largely due to a fundamental error which runs through his whole book and was inherent in the social speculations of the Encyclopaedists.

Condorcet, like all his circle, ignored the preponderant part which institutions have played in social development.

So far as he considered them at all, he saw in them obstacles to the free play of human reason; not the spontaneous expression of a society corresponding to its needs or embodying its ideals, but rather machinery deliberately contrived for oppressing the masses and keeping them in chains.

He did not see that if the Progress in which he believed is a reality, its possibility depends on the institutions and traditions which give to societies their stability.