In this new association their spirit was changed.
In France, as we saw, the theory of Progress was generally associated with ethical views which could find a metaphysical basis in the sensationalism of Locke.

A moral system which might be built on sensation, as the primary mental fact, was worked out by Helvetius.

But the principle that the supreme law of conduct is to obey nature had come down as a practical philosophy from Rabelais and Montaigne through Moliere to the eighteenth century.

It was reinforced by the theory of the natural goodness of man.

Jansenism had struggled against it and was defeated.