It seems at first sight that the name is perfectly suitable to that kind of belief which I have termed natural and spontaneous: such belief is exempt from doubt and disquietude; it directs man in his judgment, in his actions, and with an empire which he dreams neither of eluding nor contesting; it is ingenuous, unhesitating, practical, sovereign; who would not recognise in it the characteristics of faith?
Faith has in effect two characters; but it has at the same time others which belief natural and spontaneous has not. Almost unnoticed by the man who is yet guided by it, this natural and spontaneous belief is to him, as it were, a law from without which he has received, not accepted; which he obeys by instinct without having given it any intimate and personal assent. It suffices for the exigencies of his life; it guides him, admonishes him, impels him, or checks him; but without, so to say, any concurrence on his own part, without giving birth in him to the sentiment that any active, energetic, or powerful principle is stirring within him, without procuring him the profound joy of contemplating, loving, adoring the truth which reigns over him. Faith, on the contrary, has this power; faith is not science, neither is it ignorance; the mind which faith penetrates has never yet, perhaps, rendered a true account to itself of that in which it has faith; and, perhaps, never will do so; but the mind is, nevertheless, certain of it; to the mind it is present, living; it is no longer a general belief, a law of human nature which governs the moral man, as the law of gravitation governs bodies; it is a personal conviction, a truth which the moral man has made his own by force of contemplation, of voluntary obedience, and love. Henceforth this truth does much more than suffice to his life, it satisfies his soul; it does much more than direct him, it enlightens him. How many, for instance, live under the empire of a natural and instinctive belief that moral good and moral evil exist, without our being able to affirm that they have faith in them. Such belief is in them, as it were, a master undisputed; to whom, nevertheless, they render no homage, whom they obey without seeing and without loving. But if a circumstance, a cause, however trivial, revealing, so to say, the conscience to itself, should attract and fix their attention upon this distinction between moral good and evil, which is a spontaneous law of their nature; should they knowingly acknowledge and accept it as their legitimate master, should their intelligence honour itself by comprehending it, and their liberty do itself honour by obeying it; should they feel their soul, as it were, the sanctuary of a sacred law, as the focus into which this truth concentrates and establishes itself in order thence to diffuse its rays of light; this is no longer simple natural belief, it is faith.
Faith, then, does not exclusively consist of either of the two kinds of belief which at first sight seem to share between them the soul of man; it partakes at once of natural and spontaneous belief and of the belief which is the fruit of reflection and science; yet it differs from each; like the latter, it is individual and intimate; like the former confidant, active, dominant. Considered in itself, independently of all comparison with any other particular and analogous state of the intellect, faith is the full security of man in the possession of his belief, as absolved from effort, as exempt from doubt; the path which the mind has pursued in arriving at it is obliterated, and a sentiment only is left behind of the natural and pre-existent harmony between the mind of man and the truth itself. To the man whose mind faith penetrates, his intelligence and his volition present no longer any problems for solution as to the things which are the objects of his faith: he feels himself in full possession of the truth to light and to guide him on his way, and in full possession of himself to act according to the truth. As faith has internal characteristics which are peculiar to it, it has also, with some strange and rare exceptions, external conditions which are necessary to it; it is distinguishable from other modes of human belief, not only by its nature, but by its object. Up to a certain point these conditions may be determined and perceived, although imperfectly, according to the nature itself of that state of the soul and of its effects. A belief may be so entire and sure of itself that no further effort of the intellect seems necessary, and the believer, wholly absorbed in the truth which in his judgment he possesses, may lose all memory of the way by which he arrived at it. A conviction may be so forcible as to become master of his every action, as well as of every impulse of his mind, and may imperatively force and morally oblige him to submit all things to its empire; a state this of the intellect which is the fruit, perhaps, not merely of the exercise of the intelligence, but of a strong emotion, of a long obedience to certain practices, and in the midst of which all the three great faculties of man, the sensibility, the intelligence, and the will, are simultaneously in activity, and simultaneously satisfied. Where all this is the case, the occasion which has induced such a situation of the soul, had need be one worthy of the soul, and of its situation; the subject with which it is so occupied, had need be one which embraces the entire man, which sets in play all his faculties; responding to all the requirements of his moral nature, it has a right in return to all his devotedness.
The characteristics of ideas proper to become really a faith would seem à priori to be intellectual beauty, and practical importance. An idea which should present itself to the mind as true, without at the same time striking it by the extent or the gravity of its consequences, might produce certitude; but the name of faith would not be suitably applied to it. Nor would the practical merit, or the immediate utility of an idea suffice of itself to generate faith; to do so it must also attract, it must also take possession of the human mind by the pure beauty of truth. In other words, in order that a simple belief, whether instinctive, or arising from reflection, may become faith, the thing believed must be of a nature to procure to man the united joys of contemplation and of activity, to awaken in him the twofold sentiment, that it is of lofty origin and of potent influence; his idea must be such as that he shall be induced to regard it as a medium between the ideal world and the real world, as a missionary charged to model the one upon the other, and to unite them.
It is easy to understand why the name of faith is used almost exclusively to characterise religious beliefs; no other belief possesses in so high a degree the two characteristics, [Footnote 40] which provoke the development of faith.
[Footnote 40: Intellectual beauty and practical importance.]
Many principles of science are beautiful and fruitful in useful applications; political theories may strike the mind by the elevation of the ideas which they embody, and by the grandeur of their results; the doctrines of a pure morality are still more surely and more commonly invested with this double power. Nor have these kinds of belief failed sometimes to generate faith in the human soul. Still, to receive a clear and profound impression at one time of their intellectual beauty, at another of their practical importance, a certain measure of science and of sagacity, or a certain turn for public life, or for politics, as the case may require, is almost always necessary, and this does not belong to all men, nor to every epoch. Religious belief, on the contrary, has no need of such resources: it carries in itself, and in its very nature, infallible means of effect; having once penetrated into the heart of man, however limited and undeveloped in other respects his intelligence may be, or however rude and low his condition, it seems to him a truth at once sublime and usual, a truth which addresses itself to him as an habitant of this earth, and at the same time which opens to him access to those lofty regions, to those treasures of intellectual life, which without the light of faith he would have never known; it has for him the charm of the purest truth, and exercises over him the empire of the most powerful interest. Can it astonish us, that the belief once existent, its transition to a state of faith should be so rapid and so general? But it is precisely on account of its instinctive tendency to transform itself into faith, and into a faith of extraordinary energy, that religious belief has need to continue always free and always subject to the tests which Liberty has the right to impose. Legitimate faith, that is, as we understand it, the faith which does not deceive itself as to its objects, and which addresses itself really to the truth, is beyond contradiction the loftiest condition to which the human mind, in its present state, can attain, for it is that state in which man feels his moral nature fully satisfied, in which he gives himself up entirely to the mission prescribed to him by his thought. But a faith may be illegitimate; it is possible for this state of the soul to be produced by error; the chance of error (experience proves this at every step) is even here greater, the more the different routes which lead to faith are multiplied and the more its effects are energetic; man may be led astray in his faith by his sentiments, by his habits, by the empire of moral affections or of external circumstances, as well as by the defect or the abuse of his intellectual faculties; for his faith may spring from any of these various sources. Nevertheless, faith once there, it is daring and ambitious; it passionately aspires to diffuse itself, to usurp, to reign, and constitute itself the law of opinions and facts. Not only is faith ambitious, it is strong, it possesses, it displays, in support of its pretensions and its designs, an energy, an address, a perseverance, which are almost always wanting to opinions simply scientific. So that for this mode and degree of conviction and belief, far more than for any other, there is chance of the individual falling into error, and of society falling under oppression.