ic champion of the modern age, who conducts the
debate, and a devotee of antiquity, who finds it difficult not to admit
the arguments of his opponent, yet obstinately persists in his own
views.

Perrault bases his thesis on those general considerations which we
have met incidentally in earlier writers, and which were now almost
commonplaces among those who paid any attention to the matter. Knowledge
advances with time and experience; perfection is not necessarily
associated with antiquity; the latest comers have inherited from their
predecessors and added new acquisitions of their own. But Perrault has
thought out the subject methodically, and he draws conclusions which
have only to be extended to amount to a definite theory of the progress
of knowledge.

A particular difficulty had done much to hinder a general admission of
progressive improvement in the past. The proposition that the
posterior is better and the late comers have the advantage seemed to be
incompatible with an obvious historical fact. We are superior to the men
of the dark ages in knowledge and arts. Granted. But will you say that
the men of the tenth century were superior to the Greeks and Romans? To
this question--on which Tassoni had already touched--Perrault replies:
Certainly not. There are breaches of continuity. The sciences and arts
are like rivers, which flow for part of their course underground, and
then, finding an opening, spring forth as abundant as when they plunged
beneath the earth. Long wars, for instance, may force peoples to
neglect studies and throw all their vigour into the more urgent needs
of self-preservation; a period of ignorance may ensue but with peace
and felicity knowledge and inventions will begin again and make further
advances. [Footnote: The passages in Perrault's Parallele specially
referred to in the text will be found in vol. i. pp. 35-7, 60-61, 67,
231-3.]

It is to be observed that he does not, claim any superiority in talents
or brain power for the moderns. On the contrary, he takes his stand on
the principle which he had asserted in the "Age of Louis the Great,"
that nature is immutable. She still produces as great men as ever, but
she does not produce greater. The lions of the deserts of Africa in our
days do not differ in fierceness from those the days of Alexander the
Great, and the best men of all times are equal in vigour. It is their
work and productions that are unequal, and, given equally favourable
c