Finally, faith has not everywhere nor constantly been generated in the human mind, either by the free exercise of the intelligence, or by appeals to sensibility, or by the formation of habits. It was then said that faith was incommunicable, that it was not in man's power to impart faith, or to acquire it by any exertion of his own, that for this purpose God's intervention and the action of his grace were necessary. Divine grace became thus the preliminary condition of faith and its definitive character. The word _faith_ has, consequently, in turn expressed: 1st, a conviction acquired by the free efforts of the human intelligence; 2ndly, a conviction acquired by way of the sensibility, and without the concurrence of the reason, and often even against its authority; 3rdly, a conviction acquired by man's long submission to a power invested with a power from on high to command conviction; 4thly, a conviction induced by supernatural means,--by divine grace. {159} What in the midst of this variety of sources from which it may emanate is the essential and invariable character of faith? What is the state of the soul in which faith reigns when we consider it independently of its origin and of its object? Two kinds of belief exist in man: the one, I will not call it innate, for this is an inexact and justly criticised expression, but a belief natural and spontaneous which springs up and establishes itself in the mind of man, if not without his being aware of it, at least without the help of any reflection or volition on his part, by the development alone of his nature and the influence of that external world in the midst of which his life is passed; the other kind of belief is the result of laborious examination and reflection, the fruit of voluntary study and of the power possessed by man either to concentrate all his faculties upon a certain object with the design of mastering it, or to direct the thought inwards, and realise what is there taking place--to render an account thereof to himself, and thus to acquire by an act of volition and of reflection, a knowledge which he did not before possess, although the facts which form its object nevertheless existed as facts external--and which he might see by his eyes,--or as facts which were taking place within him. {160} Of these two kinds of belief which merits the name of _faith_? 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?_