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Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
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==Later work== [[Image:Fontenelle - Élements de la geometrie de l'infini, 1727 - 1520530.jpg |thumb|''Éléments de la géométrie de l'infini'', 1727]] Fontenelle had made his home in [[Rouen]]. In 1687 he moved to Paris. In 1687 he published his ''Histoire des oracles'', a book which made a considerable stir in theological and philosophical circles. It consisted of two essays, the first of which was designed to prove that oracles were not given by the supernatural agency of demons, and the second that they did not cease with the birth of Jesus. It excited the suspicion of the Church, and a [[Jesuit]], by name [[Jean-François Baltus]], published a ponderous refutation of it; but the peace-loving disposition of its author impelled him to leave his opponent unanswered. To the following year (1688) belongs his ''Digression sur les anciens et les modernes'', in which he took the modern side in the controversy then raging; his ''Doutes sur le système physique des causes occasionnelles'' (against [[Nicolas Malebranche]]) appeared shortly afterwards. He remained influential in his older years and when a then unknown [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]] met him in 1742, when Fontenelle was 85, he passed on the advice he gave all young writers that came to him: "You must courageously offer your brow to laurel wreaths and your nose to blows."<ref>{{cite book|title=Jean-Jacques Roussea: Restless Genius|author=Leo Damrosch|year=2007|publisher=Mariner Books}}</ref> A noted [[gourmand]], he attributed his longevity to eating [[strawberries]]{{Citation needed|date=August 2024}}. At ninety-two, one observer wrote that he was as lively as a man of twenty-two.<ref name="MadameGeoffrin"/> When, in his late nineties, he met the then-beautiful [[Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius|Madame Helvétius]], he reportedly told her, "Ah Madame, if only I were eighty again!"<ref name="80 again">{{cite book |title=Franklin of Philadelphia |page=327 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E8njwnBl-QsC&pg=PA327 |first=Esmond |last=Wright |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1988 |isbn=9780674318106}}</ref>
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