It would be much nearer the truth to take both as types of a thoroughgoing rationalism.
It may be doubted whether the thoroughgoing philosophical scepticism of antiquity has any exact parallel in modern times, with the single exception possibly of Hume's Treatise on Human Nature.
But the method observed by these Gnostics in thinking out the plan and the history of the universe is by no means thoroughgoing.
While France was deeply affected during the 16th century by the Protestant revolt, its government never undertook any thoroughgoing reform of the Church.
It was these paradoxes that Kant sought to rebut by a more thoroughgoing criticism of the basis of knowledge the substance of which is summed up in his celebrated Refuta tion of Idealism,' wherein he sought to undermine Hume's scepticism by carrying it one step further and demonstrating that not only is all knowledge of self or object excluded, but the consciousness of any series of impressions and ideas is itself impossible except in relation to some external permanent and universally accepted world of objects.