La Nature en tout temps fait les mesmes efforts;
Son etre est immuable, et cette force aisee
Dont elle produit tout ne s'est point epuisee;
.....
De cette mesme main les forces infinies
Produisent en tout temps de semblables genies.


The "Age of Louis the Great" was a brief declaration of faith.
Perrault followed it up by a comprehensive work, his Comparison of
the Ancients and the Moderns (Parallele des Anciens et des
Modernes), which appeared in four parts during the following years
(1688-1696). Art, eloquence, poetry the sciences, and their
practical applications are all discussed at length; and the
discussion is thrown into the form of conversations between an
enthusiastic champion of the modern age, who conducts the debate,
and a devotee of antiquity, who finds it difficult not to admit the
arguments of his opponent, yet obstinately persists in his own
views.

Perrault bases his thesis on those general considerations which we
have met incidentally in earlier writers, and which were now almost
commonplaces among those who paid any attention to the matter.
Knowledge advances with time and experience; perfection is not
necessarily associated with antiquity; the latest comers have
inherited from their predecessors and added new acquisitions of
their own. But Perrault has thought out the subject methodically,
and he draws conclusions which have only to be extended to amount to
a definite theory of the progress of knowledge.