MEANING
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able us to replace divine providence by human prevision. It is, in particular, the application of the arithmetic of combinations and probabilities to the social sciences which will enable us to determine with almost mathematical precision "the quantity of good and evil.,,85 The improvement which we may expect will also affect our moral and physical faculties; and then will arrive "the moment in which the sun will observe in its course free nations only, acknowledging no other master than their reason; in which tyrants and slaves, priests and their ... instruments will no longer exist but in history and upon the stage.,,86 Having definitely abolished religious superstition and political tyranny, the wants and faculties of men will continually become better proportioned amid the improvement of industry and happiness, of individual and general prosperity. A smaller portion of ground will then be made to produce a portion of provisions of higher value or greater utility; a greater quantity of enjoyment will be procured at a smaller expense of consumption; the same manufactured or artificial commodity will be produced at a smaller expense of raw materials, or will be stronger and more durable; every soil will be appropriated to productions which will satisfy a greater number of wants with the least labour, and taken in the smallest quantities. Thus the means of health and frugality will be increased, together with the instruments in the arts of production, of procuring commodities and manufacturing their produce, without demanding the sacrifice of one enjoyment by the consumer.8T
Eventually, the perfectibility of the human race may also affect man's natural constitution and postpone, if not eliminate, death; for Condorcet does not doubt that the progress of the sanitive art, the use of more wholesome food and more comfortable habitations, must necessarily prolong the ordinary duration of man's existence. Thus it is not absurd to suppose that a period must one day arrive when death will be nothing more than the effect either of extraordinary accidents, or of the slow and gradual decay of the vital powers; and that the duration of the middle space, of the interval between the birth of man and this decay, will itself have no assignable limit? Certainly man will not become immortal; but
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