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. {164} 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. {165} 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.