sanctioning of
tyrannicide. Bellarmin (1542-1621) taught that the prince derives his
authority from the people, and as the latter have given him power, so they
retain the natural right to take it back and bestow it elsewhere. The view
of Juan Mariana (1537-1624; _De Rege_, 1599) is that, as the people in
transferring rights to the prince retain still greater power themselves,
they are entitled in given cases to call the king to account. If he
corrupts the state by evil manners, and, degenerating into the tyrant,
despises religion and the laws, he may, as a public enemy, be deprived by
anyone of his authority and his life. It is lawful to arrest tyranny in any
way, and those have always been highly esteemed who, from devotion to the
public welfare, have sought to kill the tyrant.

%5. Skepticism in France.%

Toward the end of the sixteenth century, and in the very country which was
to become the cradle of modern philosophy, there appeared, as a forerunner
of the new thinking, a skepticism in which that was taken for complete
and ultimate truth which with Descartes constitutes merely a moment or
transition point in the inquiry. The earliest and the most ingenious among
the representatives of this philosophy of doubt was Michel de Montaigne
(1533-92), who in his _Essays_--which were the first of their kind and soon
found an imitator in Bacon; they appeared in 1580 in two volumes, with an
additional volume in 1588--combined delicate observation and keen thinking,
boldness and prudence, elegance and solidity. The French honor him as one
of their foremost writers. The most important among these treatises or
essays is considered to be the "Apology for Raymond of Sabunde" (ii. 12)
with valuable excursuses on faith and knowledge. Montaigne bases his doubt
on the diversity of individual views, each man's opinion differing from his
fellow's, while truth must be one. There exists no certain, no universally
admitted knowledge. The human reason is feeble and blind in all things,
knowledge is deceptive, especially the philosophy of the day, which clings
to tradition, which fills the memory with learned note-stuff, but leaves
the understanding void and, instead of things, interprets interpretations
only. Both sensuous and rational knowledge are untrustworthy: the former,
because it cannot be ascertained whether its deliverances conform to
reality, and the latter, because its premises, in order to be valid, need
others in turn for th