unreservedly the value of the Cartesian method. Sometimes, he says,
a great man gives the tone to his age; and this is true of
Descartes, who can claim the glory of having established a new art
of reasoning. He sees the effects in literature. The best 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