t books on moral and political subjects are
distinguished by an arrangement and precision which he traces to the
esprit geometrique characteristic of Descartes. [Footnote: Sur l'utilite
des mathematiques el de la physique (Oeuvres, iii. p. 6, ed. 1729).]
Fontenelle himself had this "geometrical mind," which we see at its best
in Descartes and Hobbes and Spinoza.

He had indeed a considerable aptitude for letters. He wrote poor verses,
and could not distinguish good poetry from bad. That perhaps was the
defect of l'esprit geometrique. But he wrote lucid prose. There was an
ironical side to his temper, and he had an ingenious paradoxical wit,
which he indulged, with no little felicity, in his early work, Dialogues
of the Dead. These conversations, though they show no dramatic power and
are simply a vehicle for the author's satirical criticisms on life, are
written with a light touch, and are full of surprises and unexpected
turns. The very choice of the interlocutors shows a curious fancy,
which we do not associate with the geometrical intellect. Descartes
is confronted with the Third False Demetrius, and we wonder what the
gourmet Apicius will find to say to Galileo.

2.

In the Dialogues of the Dead, which appeared in 1683, the Ancient and
Modern controversy is touched on more than once, and it is the subject
of the conversation between Socrates and Montaigne. Socrates ironically
professes to expect that the age of Montaigne will show a vast
improvement on his own; that men will have profited by the experience
of many centuries; and that the old age of the world will be wiser and
better regulated than its youth. Montaigne assures him that it is not
so, and that the vigorous types of antiquity, like Pericles, Aristides,
and Socrates himself, are no longer to be found. To this assertion
Socrates opposes the doctrine of the permanence of the forces of Nature.
Nature has not degenerated in her other works; why should she cease to
produce reasonable men?

He goes on to observe that antiquity is enlarged and exalted by
distance: "In our own day we esteemed our ancestors more than they
deserved, and now our posterity esteems us more than we deserve. There
is really no difference between our ancestors, ourselves, and our
posterity. C'est toujours la meme chose." But, objects Montaigne, I
should have thought that things were always changing; that different
ages had their different characters. Are there not ages of learning a