342 ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF PARIS. 



and Belles-Lcttrcs. He had, moreover, published all his principal works, 

 among which his TluraUty of Worlds (1686) had formed his true title to the 

 place of secretary of the Academy of Sciences, as the History of Oracles ( 1687) 

 opened to him the doors of the Academy of Inscriptions. His genius- was there- 

 fore formed ; his ideas had taken shape ; he was master of his philosophy, his 

 style, his distinctive manner ; and this was first clearly seen in the two prefaces 

 prefixed, the one to his History, of 1666, the other to that of 1699 — works iu 

 which the new spirit of the sciences shines with so much lustre, and the finest, 

 no doubt, that lie has written. 



" Fontenelle," says Cuvier, "by the clear and lucid manner in which he 

 exhibited the labors of the Academy, contributed to diffuse a taste for the 

 sciences more, perhaps, than any one of his time who cultivated them." That is 

 true ; but it is not enough. Fontenelle did not restrict himself to diffusing a 

 taste for the sciences. No one more ably seconded Descartes, the destroyer 

 of the scholastic philosophy ; no one, after the great men Avho founded it, Des- 

 cartes, Bacon, Galileo, Leibnitz, Newton, better comprehended the modern 

 philosophy. He was one of the first who discerned the metaphysics of the 

 sciences, and the first who made them speak the common language. His influ- 

 ence has been greater than is generally thought. The same thing has occurred 

 in his case as iu Buffon's : the writer has thrown into the shade the savant and 

 the philosopher. 



§ 1. Of the scholastic plcilosophy . 



The scholastic philosophy sprang from Avhat would cause it to revive to- 

 morrow if there were no academies : from the persuasion that all was known, 

 from adhesion to the words of the master, to the authority of the book ; from 

 resting in terms without proceeding to things. Fontenelle well defined this as 

 the 2)hilosophy of tvonls, and modern philosophy not less justly as the philos- 

 ophy of things. 



lie says, in speaking of the treatise of Duhamel, entitled Philosophia Fetus 

 et Nova, &CG. : " This Avork appeared in 1678, and is as judicious and happy an 

 assemblage as could well be found of the old and new ideas, of the philosophy 

 of words and of that of things, of the schools and of the academy." He every- 

 where mocks at substantial for ms and occult qualities: " Avords, he says," "which 

 have no other merit but that of having long passed for things." In all this, it 

 is true, he follows Descartes. The latter had said of the ancient philosophy, 

 " It contains only words, and I seek only for things." Of substantial forms 

 and occult qualities he pronounced, " that they were nothing more than chime- 

 ras, more di£licul^to be understood than all that was pretended to be explained 

 by their means ; that they had been invented only to make it easy to give a 

 reason for everything, if it may be said, indeed, that a reason is given for 

 things when we explain what is obscure by something which is still more so." 

 It is the daring genius of Descartes which animates the acute intellect of 

 Fontenelle ; an intellect not only acute, but singularly judicious, and which, 

 when it is necessary, knows how to check Descartes himself. " The errors of 

 Descartes," he says, " are such that quite often they impart light to other 

 philosophers, whether it be that when he is deceived he is not far estray from 

 the truth and the mistake is easy to rectify, or that he sometimes gives original 

 views and furnishes ingenious ideas, even when he is most astray." He fur- 

 ther says, and still with characteristic fidicity, " It is by following the princi- 

 ples of Descartes that we place ourselves in a position to abandon his opin- 

 ions." And again : " It behooves us always to admire Descartes, and some- 

 times to follow him." 



There was one point, however, and an important one, in whicli he coiild 

 never abandon Descartes. I mean his prejudices against a vacuum and against 

 attraction. "Attraction and a vacuum," he says in his Eloge of Newton, 



