continually learning. At each stage of his life this universal man
profited by the knowledge he had acquired in the preceding stages,
and he is now in his old age. This is a fuller, and probably an
independent, development of the comparison of the race to an
individual which we found in Bacon. It occurs in a fragment which
remained unpublished for more than a hundred years, and is often
quoted as a recognition, not of a general progress of man, but of a
progress in human knowledge.

To those who reproached Descartes with disrespect towards ancient
thinkers he might have replied that, in repudiating their authority,
he was really paying them the compliment of imitation and acting far
more in their own spirit than those who slavishly followed them.
Pascal saw this point. "What can be more unjust," he wrote, "than to
treat our ancients with greater consideration than they showed
towards their own predecessors, and to have for them this incredible
respect which they deserve from us only because they entertained no
such regard for those who had the same advantage (of antiquity) over
them?" [Footnote: Pensees, ib.]

At the same time Pascal recognised that we are indebted to the
ancients for our very superiority to them in the extent of our
knowledge. "They reached a certain point, and the slightest effort
enables us to mount higher; so that we find ourselves on a loftier
plane with less trouble and less glory." The attitude of Descartes
was very different. Aspiring to begin ab integro and reform the
foundations of knowledge, he ignored or made little of what had been
achieved in the past. He attempted to cut the threads of continuity
as with the shears of Atropos. This illusion [Footnote: He may be
reproached himself with scholasticism in his metaphysical