Equitable and moderate in mind, prudent and cold in temperament, Fontenelle passed his life in discussion without ever stumbling into disputes.  “I am no theologian, or philosopher, or man of any denomination, of any sort whatever; consequently I am not at all bound to be right, and I can with honor confess that I was mistaken, whenever I am made to see it.”  “How did you manage to keep so many friends without making one enemy?” he was asked in his old age.  “By means of two maxims,” he answered:  “Everything is possible; everybody may be right” (tout le monde a raison).  The friends of Fontenelle were moderate like himself; impressed with his fine qualities, they pardoned his lack of warmth in his affections.  “He never laughed,” says Madame Geoffrin, his most intimate friend.  “I said to him one day, ’Did you ever laugh, M. de Fontenelle?’ ‘No,’ he answered; ‘I never went ha! ha! ha!’ That was his idea of laughing; he just smiled at smart things, but he was a stranger to any strong feeling.  He had never shed tears, he had never been in a rage, he had never run, and, as he never did anything from sentiment, he did not catch impressions from others.  He had never interrupted anybody, he listened to the end without losing anything; he was in no hurry to speak, and, if you had been accusing against him, he would have listened all day without saying a syllable.”

The very courage and trustiness of Fontenelle bore this stamp of discreet moderation.  When Abbe St. Pierre was excluded from the French Academy under Louis XV. for having dared to criticise the government of Louis XIV., one single ball in the urn protested against the unjust pressure exercised by Cardinal Fleury upon the society.  They all asked one another who the rebel was; each defended himself against having voted against the minister’s order; Fontenelle alone kept silent; when everybody had exculpated himself, “It must be myself, then,” said Fontenelle half aloud.

So much cool serenity and so much taste for noble intellectual works prolonged the existence of Fontenelle beyond the ordinary limits; he was ninety-nine and not yet weary of life.  “If I might but reach the strawberry-season once more!” he had said.  He died at Paris on the 9th of January, 1759; with him disappeared what remained of the spirit and traditions of Louis XIV.’s reign.  Montesquieu and Fontenelle were the last links which united the seventeenth century to the new era.  In a degree as different as the scope of their minds, they both felt respect for the past, to which they were bound by numerous ties, and the boldness of their thoughts was frequently tempered by prudence.  Though naturally moderate and prudent, Voltaire was about to be hurried along by the ardor of strife, by the weaknesses of his character, by his vanity and his ambition, far beyond his first intentions and his natural instincts.  The flood of free-thinking had spared Montesquieu and Fontenelle; it was about to carry away Voltaire almost as far as Diderot.