life under the new despotism had become far more agreeable than in
previous ages, and it was in a spirit of optimism that they devoted
themselves to the enjoyment of luxury and elegance. The experience
of what the royal authority could achieve encouraged men to imagine
that one enlightened will, with a centralised administration at its
command, might accomplish endless improvements in civilisation.
There was no age had ever been more glorious, no age more agreeable
to live in.

The world had begun to abandon the theory of corruption,
degeneration, and decay.

Some years later the optimistic theory of the perfection of the
universe found an abler exponent in Leibnitz, whom Diderot calls the
father of optimism. [Footnote: See particularly Monadologie, ad fin.
published posthumously in German 1720, in Latin 1728; Theodicee,
Section 341 (1710); and the paper, De rerum originatione radicali,
written in 1697, but not published till 1840 (Opera philosophica,
ed. Erdmann, p. 147 sqq).] The Creator, before He acted, had
considered all possible worlds, and had chosen the best. He might
have chosen one in which humanity would have been better and
happier, but that would not have been the best possible, for He had
to consider the interests of the whole universe, of which the earth
with humanity is only an insignificant part. The evils and
imperfections of our small world are negligible in comparison with
the happiness and perfection of the whole cosmos. Leibnitz, whose
theory is deduced from the abstract proposition that the Creator is
perfect, does not say that now or at any given moment the universe
is as perfect as it could be; its merit lies in its potentialities;
it will develop towards perfection throughout infinite time.