The sciences and arts are like rivers, which flow for part of their course underground, and then, finding an opening, spring forth as abundant as when they plunged beneath the earth.

Long wars, for instance, may force peoples to neglect studies and throw all their vigour into the more urgent needs of self-preservation; a period of ignorance may ensue but with peace and felicity knowledge and inventions will begin again and make further advances.

[Footnote: The passages in Perrault's Parallele specially referred to in the text will be found in vol.i.pp.

35-7, 60-61, 67, 231-3.] It is to be observed that he does not, claim any superiority in talents or brain power for the moderns.

On the contrary, he takes his stand on the principle which he had asserted in the "Age of Louis the Great," that nature is immutable.