Note 64 — Chapter XV · FRENCH AND DUTCH FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Inasmuch too as Protestantism had no such ground, and rationalism was still far from having cleared its bases, Huet, as things went, was within his moral rights when he set forth his transcendentalist skepticism in his Quæstiones Alnetanæ in 1690. Though written in very limpid Latin,64 that work attracted practically no attention; and though, having a repute for provincialism in his French style, Huet was loth to resort to the vernacular, he did devote his spare hours through a number of his latter years to preparing his Traité Philosophique de la faiblesse de l’esprit humain, which, dying in 1722, he left to be published posthumously (1723). The outcry against his criticism of Descartes and his Demonstratio had indisposed him for further personal strife; but he was determined to leave a completed message. Thus it came about that a sincere and devoted Catholic bishop “left, as his last legacy to his fellow-men, a work of the most outrageous skepticism.”65