orance et les prejuges dominants."
[Footnote: Eloge de M. Lemery.] And of all these rebels against ruling
prejudices he probably did more than any single man to exhibit the
consequences of the Cartesian ideas and drive them home.

The Plurality of Worlds was a contribution to the task of transforming
thought and abolishing ancient error; but the History of Oracles which
appeared in the following year was more characteristic. It was a free
adaptation of an unreadable Latin treatise by a Dutchman, which in
Fontenelle's skilful hands becomes a vehicle for applying Cartesian
solvents to theological authority. The thesis is that the Greek oracles
were a sacerdotal imposture, and not, as ecclesiastical tradition said,
the work of evil spirits, who were stricken silent at the death of Jesus
Christ. The effect was to discredit the authority of the early Fathers
of the Church, though the writer has the discretion to repudiate such
an intention. For the publication was risky; and twenty years later a
Jesuit Father wrote a treatise to confute it, and exposed the secret
poison, with consequences which might have been disastrous for
Fontenelle if he had not had powerful friends among the Jesuits
themselves. Fontenelle had none of the impetuosity of Voltaire,
and after the publication of the History of Oracles he confined his
criticism of tradition to the field of science. He was convinced that
"les choses fort etablies ne peuvent etre attaquees que par degrez."
[Footnote: Eloge de M. Lemery.]

The secret poison, of which Fontenelle prepared this remarkable dose
with a touch which reminds us of Voltaire, was being administered in
the same Cartesian period, and with similar precautions, by Bayle. Like
Fontenelle, this great sceptic, "the father of modern incredulity" as
he was called by Joseph de Maistre, stood between the two centuries and
belonged to both. Like Fontenelle, he took a gloomy view of humanity;
he had no faith in that goodness of human nature which was to be a
characteristic dogma of the age of illumination. But he was untouched
by the discoveries of science; he took no interest in Galileo or Newton;
and while the most important work of Fontenelle was the interpretation
of the positive advances of knowledge, Bayle's was entirely subversive.

The principle of unchangeable laws in nature is intimately connected
with the growth of Deism which is a note of this period. The function of
the Deity was virtually confined to o