"The transition to the idea of progress was not one that could be completed in a single simple stage… and at the close of the seventeenth century we can neither say that the idea had been fully developed nor feel that its implications had become generalised. Even the advocates of the Modems against the Ancients could hardly be described as the apostles of what we mean by progress. Even Perrault, though he thought that civilisation had come to a new peak in die France of Louis XIV, did not consider that the ascent would be prolonged indefinitely, but held that when the present epoch had had its run the world would return to normal, so that the process of decline would soon start over again. Perrault, in fact, was of the opinion that there would not be many things for which the France of Louis XIV would need to envy posterity. And Fontenelle, though he was conscious of the widening vistas which the future promised to the natural sciences, was too well aware of the limitations of human nature to share the illusions of the ' concerning the general improvement of the world."
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