His forecast of the future is based on the ideas and tendencies of his own age.

[Footnote: It is interesting to notice that the ablest of medieval Arabic historians, Ibn Khaldun (fourteenth century), had claimed that if history is scientifically studied future events may be predicted.] Apart from scientific discoveries and the general diffusion of a knowledge of the laws of nature on which moral improvement depends, he includes in his prophetic vision the cessation of war and the realisation of the less familiar idea of the equality of the sexes.

If he were alive to-day, he could point with triumph to the fact that of these far-reaching projects one is being accomplished in some of the most progressive countries and the other is looked upon as an attainable aim by statesmen who are not visionaries.

The equality of the sexes was only a logical inference from the general doctrine of equality to which Condorcet's social theory is reducible.

For him the goal of political progress is equality; equality is to be the aim of social effort--the ideal of the Revolution.
For it is the multitude of men that must be considered--the mass of workers, not the minority who live on their labours.