In a measure Simone (Simcha) Luzzatto (born about 1590, died 1663) may be reckoned among the sceptics of this time. He was, at the same time as Leo Modena, rabbi in Venice. Luzzatto was not an eminent personage; but he had more solidity than his colleague Modena, or than Delmedigo. By the latter, who knew him personally, he was praised as a distinguished mathematician. He was also well read in ancient and modern literature. His uprightness and love of truth, which he never belied, distinguished him more than his knowledge and learning. A parable which Luzzatto wrote in Italian in his youth shows his views, as also his maturity of thought, and that he had reflected early on the relation of faith to science. He puts his thoughts into the mouth of Socrates, the father of Greek wisdom. At Delphi an academy had been formed to rectify the errors of human knowledge. Reason immediately presented a petition from the dungeon, where she had been so long kept by orthodox authority, to be set at liberty. Although the chief representatives of knowledge, Pythagoras and Aristotle, spoke against this request, and uttered a warning against her liberation, because, when free, she would produce and spread abroad most frightful errors, yet the academy set her at liberty; for by that means alone could knowledge be promoted. But the newly liberated minds caused great mischief; and the academicians were at a loss what to do. Then Socrates rose, and in a long speech explained that reason and authority, if allowed to reign alone, would produce only errors and mischief; but if mutually limited, reason by revelation, and revelation by reason, they mingle in the right proportion, and produce beautiful harmony, whereby man may attain his goal here below and hereafter. This thought, that reason and faith must regulate and keep watch over each other, which, in Maimuni's time had passed into a commonplace, was at this period, under the rule of Lurya's Kabbala, considered in Jewish circles a bold innovation. Simone Luzzatto did not suffer himself to be ensnared by Kabbalistic delusions; he did not cast reason behind him; he was a believer, but withal sober-minded. He did not share the delusion of Manasseh ben Israel and others that the lost tribes of Israel were existing in some part of the world enjoying independence as a military power. With sober Jewish inquirers of former times, he assumed that Daniel's revelation does not point to a future Messiah, but only reflects historical events. He composed a work on the manners and beliefs of the Jews, which he proposed to exhibit "faithfully to truth, without zeal and passion." It was probably designed to form a counterpart to Leo Modena's representation, which cast a shadow on Judaism.