The Idea of Progress

ntroversy was an inevitable incident in the liberation of the human spirit from the authority of the ancients. Towards the end of the century the de

are the three outstanding works in the episode, which is however chiefly remembered on accou

lt and the moderns, a faction for Boileau and the ancients." In the discussions on this subject a remarkable Frenchman who had long lived in England as an exile, M. de Saint Evremond, must have constantly taken part. The disjointed pieces of which Saint Evremond's writings consist are tedious and superficial, but they reveal a mind of much cultivation and considerable common sense. His judgement on Perrault's Parallel is tha

countries or times. May not the same have happened in the production, growth, and size of wit and genius in the world, or in some parts or ages of it, and from many more circumstances that contributed towards it than what may concur to the stupendous growth of a tree or animal?"] And it must be confessed that the most useful result of the Essay was the answer which it provoked from Wotton. For Wotton had a far wider range of knowledge, and a more judicious mind, than any of the other controversialists, with the exception of Fontenelle; and in knowledge of antiquity he was Fontenelle's superior. His inquiry stands out as the most sensible and unprejudiced contribution to the whole debate. He accepts as just the reasoning of Fontenelle "as to the comparative

periority of the Greeks and Romans in poetry and literary style may be admitted without prejudice to the mental equality of the moderns, for it may be explained partly by the genius of their languages and partly by political circumstances-for example, in the case of oratory, [Footnote: This had been noted by Fontenelle in his Digression.] by the practical

still too great a hold over modern books, and physical and mathematical studies tend to be neglected. But he ends his Reflexions by the speculation that "some future age, though perhaps not the next, and in a country now possibly little thoug

d Perrault. For Perrault contended that in literature and art, as well as in science, later generations can, through the advantage of time and longer experience, attain to a higher excellence than their predecessors. Fontenelle, on the other hand, held that poetry an

e general advance of civilisation? Perrault, as we have seen, threw out the suggestion that increased experience and psychological study enabled the moderns to penetrate more deeply into the recesses of the human soul, and therefore to bring to

etry in its most comprehensive sense; and have read the poets and the historians and the metaphysicians whose writings have been accessible to me-and have looked upon

ction, notwithstanding the concession often made by the advocates of hum

he Abbe Terrasson, maintained that "to separate the general view of the progress of the human mind in regard to natural science, and in regard to belles-lettres, would be a fitting expedient to a man who had two souls, but it is useless to him who has only one." [Footnote: Abbe Terrasson, 1670-1750. His Philosophie applicable a tons les objets de l'esprit et de la raison was issued posthumously in 1754. His Dissertation critique sur l'Iliade appeared in 1715.]He put the matter in too abstract a way to carry conviction; but the nineteenth century was to j

evelopment, without compromising the distinction on which Wotton and others insisted between the natural sciences and the aesthetic arts. But that distinction, emphatically