Le Vayer and Huet, who have been already mentioned (pp. 50-51), mediate between the founders of skepticism and Bayle, its most gifted representative. The latter of these two wrote a _Criticism of the Cartesian Philosophy_, 1689, besides a _Treatise on the Impotence of the Human Mind_, which did not appear until after his death. He opposes, among other things, the criterion of truth based on evidence, since there is an evidence of the false not to be distinguished from that of the true, as well as the position that God becomes a deceiver in the bestowal of a weak and blind reason--for he gives us, at the same time, the power to know its deceptive character. As the last among those influenced by Descartes but who advanced beyond him, may be mentioned the acute Pierre Bayle (1647-1706; professor in Sedan and Rotterdam; _Works_, 1725-31[1]), who greatly excited the world of letters by his occasional and polemic treatises, and still more by the journal, _Nouvelles de la République des Lettres_ from 1684, and his _Historical and Critical Dictionary_, in two volumes, 1695 and 1697. Nowhere do the most opposite antitheses dwell in such close proximity as in the mind of Bayle. Along with an ever watchful doubt he harbors a most active zeal for knowledge, with a sincere spirit of belief (which has been wrongly disputed by Lange, Zeller, and Pünjer) a demoniacal pleasure in bringing to light absurdities in the doctrines of faith, with absolute confidence in the infallibility of conscience an entirely pessimistic view of human morality. His strength lies in criticism and polemics, his work in the latter (aside from his hostility to fanaticism and the persecution of those differing in faith) being directed chiefly against optimism and the deistic religion of reason, which holds the Christian dogmas capable of proof, or, at least, faith and knowledge capable of reconciliation. The doctrines of faith are not only above reason, incomprehensible, but contrary to reason; and it is just on this that our merit in accepting them depends. The mysteries of the Gospel do not seek success before the judgment seat of thought, they demand the blind submission of the reason; nay, if they were objects of knowledge they would cease to be mysteries. Thus we must choose between religion and philosophy, for they cannot be combined. For one who is convinced of the untrustworthiness of the reason and her lack of competence in things supernatural, it is in no wise contradictory or impossible to receive as true things which she declares to be false; he will thank God for the gift of a faith which is entirely independent of the clearness of its objects and of its agreement with the axioms of philosophy. Even, when in purely scientific questions he calls attention to difficulties and shows contradictions on every hand, Bayle by no means intends to hold up principles with contradictory implications as false, but only as uncertain.[2] The reason, he says, generalizing from his