Note 950 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
Nothing can be better than his summary of this vast conception: ‘Tous les ages sont enchaînés par une suite de causes et d'effets qui lient l'état du monde à tous ceux qui l'ont précédé.’ Second Discours en Sorbonne, in Œuvres de Turgot, vol. ii. p. 52. Every thing Turgot wrote on history is a development of this pregnant sentence. That he understood the necessity of an historian being acquainted with physical science, and with the laws of the configuration of the earth, climate, soil, and the like, is evident in his fragment, La Géographie Politique, in Œuvres, vol. ii. pp. 166–208. It is no slight proof of his political sagacity, that in 1750 he distinctly foretold the freedom of the American colonies. Compare Œuvres de Turgot, vol. ii. p. 66, with Mém. sur Turgot, vol. i. p. 139.