onditions, the latest must be the best. For science and the arts depend
upon the accumulation of knowledge, and knowledge necessarily increases
as time goes on.

But could this argument be applied to poetry and literary art, the field
of battle in which the belligerents, including Perrault himself, were
most deeply interested? It might prove that the modern age was capable
of producing poets and men of letter no less excellent than the ancient
masters, but did it prove that their works must be superior? The
objection did not escape Perrault, and he answers it ingeniously. It is
the function of poetry and eloquence to please the human heart, and
in order to please it we must know it. Is it easier to penetrate the
secrets of the human heart than the secrets of nature, or will it take
less time? We are always making new discoveries about its passions and
desires. To take only the tragedies of Corneille you will find there
finer and more delicate reflections on ambition, vengeance, and jealousy
than in all the books of antiquity. At the close of his Parallel,
however, Perrault, while he declares the general superiority of the
moderns, makes a reservation in regard to poetry and eloquence "for the
sake of peace."

The discussion of Perrault falls far short of embodying a full idea
of Progress. Not only is he exclusively concerned with progress in
knowledge--though he implies, indeed, without developing, the doctrine
that happiness depends on knowledge--but he has no eyes for the future,
and no interest in it. He is so impressed with the advance of knowledge
in the recent past that he is almost incapable of imagining further
progression. "Read the journals of France and England," he says, "and
glance at the publications of the Academies of these great kingdoms, and
you will be convinced that within the last twenty or thirty years more
discoveries have been made in natural science than throughout the period
of learned antiquity. I own that I consider myself fortunate to know the
happiness we enjoy; it is a great pleasure to survey all the past ages
in which I can see the birth and the progress of all things, but nothing
which has not received a new increase and lustre in our own times. Our
age has, in some sort, arrived at the summit of perfection. And since
for some years the rate of the progress is much slower and appears
almost insensible--as the days seem to cease lengthening when the
solstice is near--it is pleasant to t