"completely indifferent to him." Racine showed himself one of the Ancients by focusing his choice of subjects on those drawn from the literature of antiquity. He also delimited his tragedies by the classical unities, derived by the classicists from Aristotle's Poetics; the unities of place, time, and action (one scene location, 24 hours, and consistent actions, respectively). In the opening years of the 18th century, Pierre de Marivaux was to show himself a Modern by establishing a new genre of theatre—unknown to the Ancients—the sentimental comedy (comédie larmoyante). In it, the impending tragedy was resolved by the end, amid reconciliations and floods of tears. Assessment In the end, the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns was a cover, often a witty one, for opposing views of much deeper significance. One side was attached to the classic ideals of Greece and Rome and rejected a theory of art that turned literature into propaganda for the ruling powers, while the other contested the very idea of intellectual or aesthetic values above the authority of the King and the Church. The renewal of interest in antiquity during the Age of Enlightenment led to a reassessment of the achievements of the classical past, and ended up subjecting the scriptures themselves to the scrutiny of critical thinkers. The attack on authority in politics and religion had analogues in the rise of scientific inquiry, and a challenge to royal and ecclesiastical authority in the literary field, already announced the questioning of state and society at the time of the French Revolution, when absolute monarchy and state-sanctioned religion—the emblems of modernity—would be overthrown in the name of the ancient ideas of republic, democracy, and freedom of religion. Analogous 16th–20th-century debates The Renaissance humanistic revolution, and its rediscovery of the intellectual achievements from classical (Greek and Roman) antiquity, brought about a divergence with medieval scholasticism and set the framework for the Scientific Revolution to come. Much as the Humanists had been preoccupied with uncovering the original meaning of language, literature and culture, so too had the natural philosophers of a century later. René Descartes (1596 – 1650) and Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) set the tone of a return to nature in that they wanted to restart the entire project of science and humanities by determining laws based on an examination of reality rather than scripture. Their questioning would lead Descartes down a path of rationalism and Bacon