Having established the natural equality of the Ancients and Moderns,
Fontenelle inferred that whatever differences exist are due to
external conditions--(1) time; (2) political institutions and the
estate of affairs in general.

The ancients were prior in time to us, therefore they were the
authors of the first inventions. For that, they cannot be regarded
as our superiors. If we had been in their place we should have been
the inventors, like them; if they were in ours, they would add to
those inventions, like us. There is no great mystery in that. We
must impute equal merit to the early thinkers who showed the way and
to the later thinkers who pursued it. If the ancient attempts to
explain the universe have been recently replaced by the discovery of
a simple system (the Cartesian), we must consider that the truth
could only be reached by the elimination of false routes, and in
this way the numbers of the Pythagoreans, the ideas of Plato, the
qualities of Aristotle, all served indirectly to advance knowledge.
"We are under an obligation to the ancients for having exhausted
almost all the false theories that could be formed." Enlightened
both by their true views and by their errors, it is not surprising
that we should surpass them.

But all this applies only to scientific studies, like mathematics,
physics, and medicine, which depend partly on correct reasoning and
partly on experience. Methods of reasoning improve slowly, and the
most important advance which has been made in the present age is the
method inaugurated by Descartes. Before him reasoning was loose; he
introduced a more rigid and precise standard, and its influence is
not only manifest in our best works on physics and philosophy, but