It must be admitted, however, that Renan’s attitude to the problems of knowledge was largely sceptical. While, as we shall see in the following chapter, he extolled science, his attitude to belief and to knowledge was irritating in its vagueness and changeableness. He appeared to pose too much as a _dilettante_ making a show of subtle intellect, rather than a serious thinker of the first rank. His eminence and genius are unquestioned, but he played in a bewitching and frequently bewildering manner with great and serious problems, and one cannot help wishing that this great intellect of his—and it was unquestionably great—was not more steady and was not applied by its owner more steadfastly and courageously to ultimate problems. His writings reflect a bewildering variety of contradictory moods, playful, scathing, serious and mocking. Indeed, he replied in his _Feuilles detachées_ (1892) to the accusations of Amiel by insisting that irony is the philosopher’s last word. For him as for his brilliant fellow-countryman, Anatole France, ironical scepticism is the ultimate product of his reflection upon life. His _Examen de Conscience_ philosophique is his Confession of Faith, written four years before his death, in which he tries to defend his sceptical attitude and to put forward scepticism as an apology for his own uncertainty and his paradoxical changes of view. Irony intermingles with his doubt here too. We do not know, he says, ultimate reality; we do not know whether there be any purpose or end in the universe at all. There may be, but on the other hand it may be a farce and fiasco. By refusing to believe in anything, rejecting both alternatives, Renan argues, with a kind of mental cowardice, we avoid the consequence of being absolutely deceived. He recommended an adoption of mixed belief and doubt, optimism and irony.