means of distinguishing truth from falsehood, it follows that we are born
not to possess truth but to seek it. Truth dwells alone in the bosom of
God; for us doubt and investigation are the only good amid all the error
and tribulation which surround us. Life is all misery. Man is capable of
mediocrity alone; he can neither be entirely good nor entirely evil; he is
weak in virtue, weak in vice, and the best degenerates in his hands. Even
religion suffers from the universal imperfection. It is dependent on
nationality and country, and each religion is based on its predecessor;
the supernatural origin of which all religions boast belongs in fact
to Christianity alone, which is to be accepted with humility and with
submission of the reason. Charron lays chief emphasis, however, on the
practical side of Christianity, the fulfillment of duty; and the "wisdom"
which forms the subject of his book is synonymous with uprightness
(_probité_), the way to which is opened up by self-knowledge and whose
reward is repose of spirit. And yet we are not to practice it for the
sake of the reward, but because nature and reason, i.e., God, absolutely
(entirely apart from the pleasurable results of virtue) require us to be
good. True uprightness is more than mere legality, for even when outward
action is blameless, the motives may be mixed. "I desire men to be upright
without paradise and hell." Religion seeks to crown morality, not to
generate it; virtue is earlier and more natural than piety. In his
definition of the relation between religion and ethics, his delimitation
of morality from legality, and his insistence on the purity of motives (do
right, because the inner rational law commands it), an anticipation of
Kantian principles may be recognized.

Under Francis Sanchez (died 1632; his chief work is entitled _Quod Nihil
Scitur_), a Portuguese by birth, and professor of medicine in Montpellier
and Toulouse, skepticism was transformed from melancholy contemplation into
a fresh, vigorous search after new problems. In the place of book-learning,