(Edited and translated into Engilsh by) Ronald L. MEEK, 1973: Turgot on Progress, Sociology and Economics, Cambridge University Press.

(1) First stage: Before men were conversant with the mutual interconnection of physical effects, noting was more natural than to suppose that those were produced by intelligent beings, invisible and resembling ourselves; ... Everything that happened, without men having a hand in it, has its god, ...

(2) Second stage: When the philosophers had recognised the absurdity of these fables, without yet having acquired any real understanding of natural history, the idea struck them to explain the causes of phenomena by way of abstract expressions like essences and faculties: expression which in fact explained nothing, ...

(3) Third stage: It was only much later, through observation of the mechanical action which bodies have upon one another, that men derived from this mechanics other hypotheses which mathematics was able to develop and experiment to verify.

[TURGOT, about 1750, On universal history, in Turgot on Progress, Sociology and Economics, p. 102.]

Self-interest, ambition, and vainglory continually change the world scene and inundate the earth with blood; yet in the midst of their ravages manners are softened, the human mind becomes more enlightened, and separate nations are brought closer to one another. Finally commercial and political ties unite all parts of the globe, and the whole human race, through alternate periods of rest and unrest, of weal and woe, goes on advancing, although at a slow pace, towards greater perfection.

[TURGOT, 1750, A philosophical review of the successive advances of the human mind, in Turgot on Progress, Sociology and Economics, p. 41.]

It is only through upheavals and ravages that nations have been extended, and that order and government have in the long run been perfected; ...

[On universal history, p. 71.]

[T]he ambitions themselves, in forming great nations, have contributed to the designs of Providence, to the progress of enlightenment, and thus to the increase in the happiness of the human race, with which they were not concerned at all. Their passions, even their fits of rage, have led them on their way without their being aware of where they were going. I seem to see a huge army, every movement of which is directed by some mighty genius. ... [E]ach part of the army makes its way through the obstacles without knowing what may result from it: the leader alone sees the combined effect of all these different movements.

[On universal history, p. 69 -- 70.]