ce 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 is even
discernible in books on ethics and religion.

We must expect posterity to excel us as we excel the Ancients, through
improvement of method, which is a science in itself--the most difficult
and least studied of all--and through increase of experience. Evidently
the process is endless (il est evident que tout cela n'a point de fin),
and the latest men of science must be the most competent.

But this does not apply to poetry or eloquence, round which the
controversy has most violently raged. For poetry and eloquence do not
depend on correct reasoning. They depend principally on vivacity of
imagination, and "vivacity of imagination does not require a long
course of experiments, or a great multitude of rules, to attain all the
perfection of which it is capable." Such perfection might be attained in
a few centuries. If the ancients did achieve perfection in imaginative
literature, it follows that they cannot be surpassed; but we have no
right to say, as their admirers are fond of pretending, that they cannot
be equalled.

5.

Besides the mere nature of time, we have to take into account external
circumstances in considering this question.

If the forces of nature are permanent, how are we to explain the fact
that in the barbarous centuries after the decline of Rome--the term
Middle Ages has not yet come into currency--ignorance was so dense and
deep? This breach of continuity is one of the plausible arguments of
the advocates of the Ancients. Those ages, they say, were ignorant and
barbarous because the Greek and Latin writers had ceased to be read;
as soon as the study of the classical models revived there was a
renaissance of reason and good taste. That is true, but it proves
nothing. Nature never forgot how to mould the head of Cicero or Livy.
She produces in every age men who might be great men; but the age does
not always allow them to exert their talents. Inundations of barbarians,
universal wars, governments which discourage or do not favour science
and art, prejudices which assume all variety of shapes--like the
Chinese prejudice against dissecting corpses--may impose long periods of
ignorance or bad taste.

But observe that, though the return to the study