Modernes" (1856).] Auguste Comte was, I think, one of the first to
call attention to some of its wider bearings.

The quarrel, indeed, has considerable significance in the history of
ideas. It was part of the rebellion against the intellectual yoke of
the Renaissance; the cause of the Moderns, who were the aggressors,
represented the liberation of criticism from the authority of the
dead; and, notwithstanding the perversities of taste of which they
were guilty, their polemic, even on the purely literary side, was
distinctly important, as M. Brunetiere has convincingly shown,
[Footnote: See his "L'evolution des genres dans l'histoire de la
litterature."] in the development of French criticism. But the form
in which the critical questions were raised forced the debate to
touch upon a problem of greater moment. The question, Can the men of
to-day contend on equal terms with the illustrious ancients, or are
they intellectually inferior? implied the larger issue, Has nature
exhausted her powers; is she no longer capable of producing men
equal in brains and vigour to those whom she once produced; is
humanity played out, or are her forces permanent and inexhaustible?

The assertion of the permanence of the powers of nature by the
champions of the Moderns was the direct contradiction of the theory
of degeneration, and they undoubtedly contributed much towards
bringing that theory into discredit. When we grasp this it will not
be surprising to find that the first clear assertions of a doctrine
of progress in knowledge were provoked by the controversy about the
Ancients and Moderns.

Although the great scene of the controversy was France, the question
had been expressly raised by an Italian, no less a person than