In effect, blind confidence in a word, in a sign—precipitate induction from which one infers from the reality of the sign to the reality of the thing signified: a second induction to the effect that any doctrine relatively elevated, from the social and moral point of view, and put forth by men one respects, is probably true, even if it be in many points irrational—these are the principal elements of the primitive faith in revelation. And this faith, in all its crudity, exists at the present day. It wins its way through the eyes and ears; therein lies its power. It is much less mystical than we are inclined to fancy; it is incarnate in its monuments, its temples, its books; it walks about and breathes in the person of its priests, its saints, its gods; we cannot look about us without realizing its existence in one form or another. It has been of great service to human thought, in spite of its pitfalls, thus to have been able to express itself, to fashion objects in its own image, to penetrate marble and stone, to provide that it shall itself be borne back in upon us from without. How can one doubt what is visible and tangible?
Results in “credo quia ineptum.”
Faith in testimony and authority leads to faith in sacred texts and in the very letter of these texts. This is what one means by literal faith. It exists still in our day, among many civilized people. It constitutes the basis of the Catholicism of the masses. “In order to silence restless spirits,” said the council of Trent, “it is decreed that no one may, in the interpretation of the Scriptures, ... deviate from the construction sanctioned by the Church, to seek for a supposedly more exact rendering.” Faith lies thus in a renunciation of thought, an abdication of liberty; imposes upon itself a rule not of logic but of morals, and subjects itself to dogmas as to immutable principles. It restricts intelligence beforehand to precise limits, and imposes a general direction on it, with instructions not to swerve from it. It is at this point that faith comes really to be opposed to scientific belief for which in the beginning it was a substitute. According to the council of the Vatican, those who have faith do not believe “because of the intrinsic truth of the things revealed,” but “because of the divine authority that revealed them.” If you reason with a person of that stamp, he will listen, understand, and follow you—but only to a certain point; there he stops, and nothing in the world can make him go beyond. Or rather from that point he will declare himself inexpugnable, and will assure you that you have absolutely no hold on him; and in effect, no scientific or philosophical reason could turn him from his belief, since he places the object of his faith in a sphere superior to reason, and makes his faith an affair of “conscience.” Nothing can force a man to think rightly when he does not propose rectitude of thought to himself as a supreme aim, and nothing can oblige him to follow the dictates of reason to the bitter end, if he believes that the instant he calls certain dogmas and certain authorities in question he is committing a sin. Thus, faith gives a certain sacred and inviolable character to what it sanctions,—converts it into a sacred ark that one may not touch without sacrilege or danger, neither may one look at it too closely nor touch it with one’s fingers, even to lend it support now and then when it seems ready to fall. Free-thought and science never consider a thing as true except provisionally, and so long as it is not seriously doubted by someone. Dogmatic faith, on the contrary, affirms as true not only the things that are uncontested, but those which, according to it, are conclusively presumed, and therefore above discussion. It follows that, if reasons for belief diminish, faith must be none the less strong. It was this that Pascal endeavoured to demonstrate. In effect, the less a belief seems rational to our finite minds, the more merit there is in lending credence to “divine authority.” It would be too simple to believe no more than what one sees or what sounds probable to one; to affirm the improbable, to believe in what seems incredible, is much more meritorious. Our courage rises in proportion as our intelligence becomes humble; the more absurd one is the greater one is—credo quia ineptum; the more difficult the task, the greater the merit. The strength of our faith is estimated, in the mysticism of Pascal, by the weakness of its “reasons.” The ideal, on this theory, would be to possess no more than the metaphysical minimum of reason for belief, the weakest conceivable of motives, a mere nothing; that is to say, one should be attached to the supreme object of one’s faith by the slenderest of bonds. The Albigensian priests, the parfaits, wear a simple white cord around their waists as an emblem of their vow; all mankind wears this cord, and it is in reality more solid and often heavier than any chain.
Complete intellectual rest incident to faith.
Scepticism tends toward a complete intellectual indifference with regard to all things; dogmatic faith produces a partial indifference, an indifference limited to certain points, determined once for all; it is no longer anxious on these heads, but rests and delights in established dogma. The sceptic and the man of faith abandon themselves thus to a more or less extensive abstinence from thought. Religious faith is a determination to suspend the flight of the imagination, to limit the sphere of thought. We all know the Oriental legend that the world is held up by an elephant, which stands on a tortoise, which floats on a sea of milk. The believer must always refrain from asking what supports the sea of milk? He must never notice a point of which there is no explanation; he must constantly repeat to himself the abortive incomplete idea that has been given him without daring to recognize that it is incomplete. In a street through which I pass every day, a blackbird whistles the same melodic phrase; the phrase is incomplete, ends abruptly, and for years I have heard him lift his voice, deliver himself of his truncated song, and stop with a satisfied air, with no need to complete his musical fragment, which I never hear without a feeling of impatience. It is thus with the true believer; accustomed as he is in the most important questions to dwell within the limits of the customary, without any curiosity about the beyond, he sings his monotonous little note without dreaming that it lacks anything—that his phrase is as clipped as his wings are, and that the narrow world of his belief is not the universe.
Wilful blindness of faith.
The people who still hold to this kind of faith represent the antique world endeavouring to perpetuate itself without a compromise in the bosom of the new world, the world of modern society. The barbarian does not wish to yield to the progress of ideas and of manners; if such people formed the majority of the nation they would constitute the greatest danger to human reason, to science, and to truth. Literal faith, in effect, makes naked truth a subject of pudicity; one does not dare to look it in the face or lift the sacred veil that hides its beauty; you find yourself in the midst of a conspiracy, mysterious beings surround you, putting their hands before your eyes and a finger on your lips. Dogma holds you, possesses you, masters you in spite of yourself; it is fixed in your heart and petrified in your intelligence: it is not without reason that faith has been compared to an anchor that has caught on the bottom and checked the vessel in its course, while the open and free ocean stretches beyond as far as the eye can reach. And who shall break the anchor from his heart? When you shake it loose in one place, faith settles to its hold somewhere else; you have a thousand weak points at which it attacks you. You can completely abandon a philosophical doctrine; but you cannot break away absolutely from a collection of beliefs in which blind and literal faith has borne sway; there is always something left; you will carry the scars and marks from it as slaves who are freed still carry on their flesh the signs of their servitude. You are branded in the heart, you shall feel the effects of it always; you shall have moments of dread and shuddering, of mystic enthusiasm, of distrust of reason, of need to represent things as being other than they really are, to see what is not, and not to see what is. The fiction that was early forced upon your soul shall often seem to you sweeter than the sound and rugged truth, you need to know; you shall hate yourself for the sin of knowledge.
Intolerance incident to faith.