13). There is also an ingenious suggestion for the communication of
messages by sound, which might be described as an anticipation of
the Morse code. Wilkins and another divine, Seth Ward, the Bishop of
Salisbury, belonged to the group of men who founded the Royal
Society.]

Men did not look far into the future; they did not dream of what the
world might be a thousand or ten thousand years hence. They seem to
have expected quick results. Even Sprat thinks that "the absolute
perfection of the true philosophy" is not far off, seeing that "this
first great and necessary preparation for its coming"--the
institution of scientific co-operation--has been accomplished.
Superficial and transient though the popular enthusiasm was, it was
a sign that an age of intellectual optimism had begun, in which the
science of nature would play a leading role.

CHAPTER V

THE PROGRESS OF KNOWLEDGE: FONTENELLE

1.

Nine months before the first part of Perrault's work appeared a
younger and more brilliant man had formulated, in a short tract, the
essential points of the doctrine of the progress of knowledge. It
was Fontenelle.

Fontenelle was an anima naturaliter moderna. Trained in the
principles of Descartes, he was one of those who, though like
Descartes himself, too critical to swear by a master, appreciated