... sans sa durée A l'égal de nos jours ne fut point éclairée'. 2. Appleby et al. also write: 'Progress and modernity...marched hand in hand'. Did Enlightenment writers invent the idea of progress? What did they think progress consisted of? (Did they all agree, for example, about where it was evident, how far it could go, how desirable it was?) J. Bury uses a metaphor to describe the idea of progress: 'The sciences and arts are like rivers, which flow for part of their course underground, and then, finding an opening, spring forth as abundant as when they plunged beneath the earth'. An Enlightenment writer who did not agree with the idea of progress was Perrault. He was so impressed with the advance of knowledge in the recent past that he was incapable of imagining further progression. However, Voltaire conceived progress as universal history, which advanced as an immense whole, steadily, and through periods of ...

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