The effect was to discredit the authority of the early Fathers of the Church, though the writer has the discretion to repudiate such an intention.

For the publication was risky; and twenty years later a Jesuit Father wrote a treatise to confute it, and exposed the secret poison, with consequences which might have been disastrous for Fontenelle if he had not had powerful friends among the Jesuits themselves.

Fontenelle had none of the impetuosity of Voltaire, and after the publication of the History of Oracles he confined his criticism of tradition to the field of science.

He was convinced that "les choses fort etablies ne peuvent etre attaquees que par degrez." [Footnote: Eloge de M.Lemery.] The secret poison, of which Fontenelle prepared this remarkable dose with a touch which reminds us of Voltaire, was being administered in the same Cartesian period, and with similar precautions, by Bayle.

Like Fontenelle, this great sceptic, "the father of modern incredulity" as he was called by Joseph de Maistre, stood between the two centuries and belonged to both.