It is dangerous to abandon one’s self to the luxury of grief; it deprives one of courage, and even of the wish for recovery. * * * * * We learn to recognize a mere blunting of the conscience in that incapacity for indignation which is not to be confounded with the gentleness of charity, or the reserve of humility. February 7, 1872.--Without faith a man can do nothing. But faith can stifle all science. What, then, is this Proteus, and whence? Faith is a certitude without proofs. Being a certitude, it is an energetic principle of action. Being without proof, it is the contrary of science. Hence its two aspects and its two effects. Is its point of departure intelligence? No. Thought may shake or strengthen faith; it cannot produce it. Is its origin in the will? No; good will may favor it, ill-will may hinder it, but no one believes by will, and faith is not a duty. Faith is a sentiment, for it is a hope; it is an instinct, for it precedes all outward instruction. Faith is the heritage of the individual at birth; it is that which binds him to the whole of being. The individual only detaches himself with difficulty from the maternal breast; he only isolates himself by an effort from the nature around him, from the love which enwraps him, the ideas in which he floats, the cradle in which he lies. He is born in union with humanity, with the world, and with God. The trace of this original union is faith. Faith is the reminiscence of that vague Eden whence our individuality issued, but which it inhabited in the somnambulist state anterior to the personal life. Our individual life consists in separating ourselves from our _milieu_; in so reacting upon it that we apprehend it consciously, and make ourselves spiritual personalities--that is to say, intelligent and free. Our primitive faith is nothing more than the neutral matter which our experience of life and things works up a fresh, and which may be so affected by our studies of every kind as to perish completely in its original form. We ourselves may die before we have been able to recover the harmony of a personal faith which may satisfy our mind and conscience as well as our hearts. But the need of faith never leaves us. It is the postulate of a higher truth which is to bring all things into harmony. It is the stimulus of research; it holds out to us the reward, it points us to the goal. Such at least is the true, the excellent faith. That which is a mere prejudice of childhood, which has never known doubt, which ignores science, which cannot respect or understand or tolerate different convictions--such a faith is a stupidity and a hatred, the mother of all fanaticisms. We may then repeat of faith what Aesop said of the tongue-- “Quid medius linguâ, linguâ quid pejus eadem?”