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THE DOCTRINE OF DEGENERATION: THE ANCIENTS AND MODERNS.
1.
Outside the circle of systematic thinkers the prevalent theory of degeneration was being challenged early in the seventeenth century.

The challenge led to a literary war, which was waged for about a hundred years in France and England; over the comparative merits of the ancients and the moderns.

It was in the matter of literature, and especially poetry, that the quarrel was most acrimonious, and that the interest of the public was most keenly aroused, but the ablest disputants extended the debate to the general field of knowledge.

The quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns used commonly to be dismissed as a curious and rather ridiculous episode in the history of literature.