and then Racine and Moliere, appealed so strongly to their taste
that they could not assign to them any rank but the first. They were
impatient of the claims to unattainable excellence advanced for the
Greeks and Romans. "The ancients," said Moliere, "are the ancients,
we are the people of to-day." This might be the motto of Descartes,
and it probably expressed a very general feeling.

It was in 1687 that Charles Perrault--who is better remembered for
his collection of fairy-tales than for the leading role which he
played in this controversy--published his poem on "The Age of Louis
the Great." The enlightenment of the present age surpasses that of
antiquity,--this is the theme.


La docte Antiquite dans toute sa duree
A l'egal de nos jours ne fut point eclairee.


Perrault adopts a more polite attitude to "la belle antiquite" than
Saint Sorlin, but his criticism is more insidious. Greek and Roman
men of genius, he suggests, were all very well in their own times,
and might be considered divine by our ancestors. But nowadays Plato
is rather tiresome; and the "inimitable Homer" would have written a
much better epic if he had lived in the reign of Louis the Great.
The important passage, however, in the poem is that in which the
permanent power of nature to produce men of equal talent in every
age is affirmed.


A former les esprits comme a former les corps