 The division of the world into one of external and internal realities, is one of the notions that Sanches and Descartes share. Where they each end up, is, of course, completely different. What is similar, on the other hand, is their starting point; that is to say, the way they articulate the radical doubt with which they begin their respective inquiries; and for that reason Sanches has often been considered a precursor of Descartes. It is undeniable that the personal expression of their scepticism as found both in That Nothing is Know (1581) and the Discourse on the Method (1637) share more than a coincidental resemblance. Pamela Kraus points out in her introduction to the Discourse on Method [DM], that the word “discours” had a wider meaning in the seventeenth century signifying among other things “‘talk’ or ‘conversation’” ([DM: 1]).  But this was not the case for Sanches, who wrote Quod nihil scitur over forty years earlier, and whose conversational style was in the service of a treatise aimed at the Aristotelianism of his time, and particularly at the Aristotelian notion of demonstrative truths. What is indeed striking are the passages in the Discourse that seem to be directly lifted from the Iberian philosopher’s 1581 treatise. Here are two examples: the first from Sanches, the latter from Descartes: