riginating the machine of nature,
which, once regulated, was set beyond any further interference on His
part, though His existence might be necessary for its conservation. A
view so sharply opposed to the current belief could not have made way
as it did without a penetrating criticism of the current theology.
Such criticism was performed by Bayle. His works were a school for
rationalism for about seventy years. He supplied to the thinkers of the
eighteenth century, English as well as French, a magazine of subversive
arguments, and he helped to emancipate morality both from theology and
from metaphysics.

This intellectual revolutionary movement, which was propagated in salons
as well as by books, shook the doctrine of Providence which Bossuet had
so eloquently expounded. It meant the enthronement of reason--Cartesian
reason--before whose severe tribunal history as well as opinions were
tried. New rules of criticism were introduced, new standards of proof.
When Fontenelle observed that the existence of Alexander the Great
could not be strictly demonstrated and was no more than highly probable,
[Footnote: Plurality des mondes, sixieme soir.] it was an undesigned
warning that tradition would receive short shrift at the hands of men
trained in analytical Cartesian methods.

11.

That the issue between the claims of antiquity and the modern age should
have been debated independently in England and France indicates that the
controversy was an inevitable incident in the liberation of the human
spirit from the authority of the ancients. Towards the end of the
century the debate in France aroused attention in England and led to
a literary quarrel, less important but not less acrimonious than that
which raged in France. Sir William Temple's Essay, Wotton's Reflexions,
and Swift's satire the Battle of the Books are the three outstanding
works in the episode, which is however chiefly remembered on account
of its connection with Bentley's masterly exposure of the fabricated
letters of Phalaris.

The literary debate in France, indeed, could not have failed to
reverberate across the Channel; for never perhaps did the literary world
in England follow with more interest, or appreciate more keenly the
productions of the great French writers of the time. In describing
Will's coffee-house, which was frequented by Dryden and all who
pretended to be interested in polite letters, Macaulay says, "there was
a faction for Perrault and the m