His opinion of the human race was expressed in the Dialogues of the Dead, [Footnote: It may be seen too in the Plurality of Worlds.] and it never seems to have varied.

The world consists of a multitude of fools, and a mere handful of reasonable men.
Men's passions will always be the same and will produce wars in the future as in the past.

Civilisation makes no difference; it is little more than a veneer.
Even if theory had not stood in his way, Fontenelle was the last man who was likely to dream dreams of social improvement.

He was temperamentally an Epicurean, of the same refined stamp as Epicurus himself, and he enjoyed throughout his long life--he lived to the age of a hundred--the tranquillity which was the true Epicurean ideal.

He was never troubled by domestic cares, and his own modest ambition was satisfied when, at the age of forty, he was appointed permanent Secretary of the Academy of Sciences.