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. { 166} 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. { 168} 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. { 169} 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.