In its root, progress, as defined in the eighteenth century, is not a movement within history, but the result of a fundamental relation between space and language: The arbitrary signs of language and writing provide men with the means of ensuring the possession of their ideas and of communicating them to others in the manner of an inheritance, constantly augmented with the new discoveries of each age; and the human race, considered from its origin, appears to the eyes of the philosopher as an immense whole that itself possesses, like every individual, its childhood and its progress.