And these incoherences, these contradictions, these relapses of M. Vacherot into systems that he disavows, and that he has just combated, what are they but striking evidences of the vanity of his efforts, like those of so many others, to explain, unaided by God, God and the universe? Of another nature is the perplexity of M. Edmond Scherer; his is the disquietude of the critic, not the embarrassment of the metaphysician. M. Edmond Scherer was a believing Christian, a believer zealous in his faith, and active in its cause. The examination of systems and of facts, historical criticism and philosophical criticism, impelled him to skepticism; not to that skepticism which is indifferent and strange to all personal conviction. M. Scherer believes in truth and in the rights of truth; but where that truth? He seeks it, he finds it not; he wanders among systems and facts as in a labyrinth, discovering at each step that his path is the wrong one, and from it nevertheless finding no issue. He is still aware that humanity cannot live in a labyrinth, that it requires--nay, absolutely requires--to issue forth, to behold, or at least to catch glimpses of, the light of day. {389} He has a sentiment of the moral requirements of human nature, of man's life; and he sees well that the negations and the doubts of the different systems of philosophy can never satisfy those requirements. I have already cited, in the course of these _Meditations_, some of the passages in which this perplexity strikingly manifests itself; a perplexity full at once of pride and sadness, which, although it does not shake M. Scherer in his convictions, makes him nevertheless see their vanity. [Footnote 85] He knows that its own thought suffices not for the human soul; perhaps it is his own soul suggests to him that knowledge. [Footnote 85: See particularly the passage cited in the Third Meditation (Rationalism) of this volume, p. 256, etc., and in the "Meditation on the Essence of the Christian Religion," (Third Meditation, the Supernatural,) p. 119.] {390}