nd
ages of ignorance, rude ages and polite? True, replies Socrates, but
these are only externalities. The heart of man does not change with
the fashions of his life. The order of Nature remains constant (l'ordre
general de la Nature a l'air bien constant).

This conclusion harmonises with the general spirit of the Dialogues. The
permanence of the forces of Nature is asserted, but for the purpose
of dismissing the whole controversy as rather futile. Elsewhere modern
discoveries, like the circulation of the blood and the motions of the
earth, are criticised as useless; adding nothing to the happiness and
pleasures of mankind. Men acquired, at an early period, a certain amount
of useful knowledge, to which they have added nothing; since then they
have been slowly discovering things that are unnecessary. Nature has not
been so unjust as to allow one age to enjoy more pleasures than
another. And what is the value of civilisation? It moulds our words, and
embarrasses our actions; it does not affect our feelings. [Footnote:
See the dialogues of Harvey with Erasistratus (a Greek physician of
the third century B.C.); Galileo with Apicius; Montezuma with Fernando
Cortez.]

One might hardly have expected the author of these Dialogues to come
forward a few years later as a champion of the Moderns, even though, in
the dedicatory epistle to Lucian, he compared France to Greece. But he
was seriously interested in the debated question, as an intellectual
problem, and in January 1688 he published his Digression on the Ancients
and Moderns, a short pamphlet, but weightier and more suggestive than
the large work of his friend Perrault, which began to appear nine months
later.

3.

The question of pre-eminence between the Ancients and Moderns is
reducible to another. Were trees in ancient times greater than to-day?
If they were, then Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes cannot be equalled in
modern times; if they were not, they can.

Fontenelle states the problem in this succinct way at the beginning of
the Digression. The permanence of the forces of Nature had been asserted
by Saint Sorlin and Perrault; they had offered no proof, and had used
the principle rather incidentally and by way of illustration. But
the whole inquiry hinged on it. If it can be shown that man has not
degenerated, the cause of the Moderns is practically won. The issue
of the controversy must be decided not by rhetoric but by physics. And
Fontenelle offers what he re