At the moment the import and far-reaching effects of the idea were not realised, either by himself or by others, and his pamphlet, which appeared in the company of a perverse theory of pastoral poetry, was acclaimed merely as an able defence of the Moderns.
8.
If the theory of the indefinite progress of knowledge is true, it is one of those truths which were originally established by false reasoning.

It was established on a principle which excluded degeneration, but equally excluded evolution; and the whole conception of nature which Fontenelle had learned from Descartes is long since dead and buried.
But it is more important to observe that this principle, which seemed to secure the indefinite progress of knowledge, disabled Fontenelle from suggesting a theory of the progress of society.

The invariability of nature, as he conceived it, was true of the emotions and the will, as well as of the intellect.

It implied that man himself would be psychically always the same--unalterable, incurable.

L'ordre general de la Nature a Fair bien constant.