Fontenelle

(Bernard le Bovier de ), nephew of Corneille, called by Voltaire the most universal genius of the reign of Louis XIV., b. Rouen, 11 Feb. 1657. Dedicated to the Virgin and St. Bernard, he was educated at the Jesuits’ College. He went to Paris in 1674; wrote some plays and Dialogues of the Dead , 1683. In 1686 appeared his Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds , and in the following year his History of Oracles , based on the work of Van Dale, for which he was warmly attacked by the Jesuit Baltus, as impugning the Church Fathers. He was made secretary to the Academy of Sciences in 1699, a post he held forty-two years. He wrote Doubts on the Physical System of Occasional Causes , and is also credited with a letter on the Resurrection of the Body , a piece on The Infinite , and a Treatise on Liberty ; “but, ” says l’Abbé Ladvocat, “as these books contain many things contrary to religion, it is to be hoped they are not his.” Fontenelle nearly reached the age of one hundred. A short time before he died (9 Jan. 1757), being asked if he felt any pain, “I only feel,” he replied, “a difficulty of existing.”