Faith has in effect two characters; but it has at the same time others which belief natural and spontaneous has not. Almost unnoticed by the man who is yet guided by it, this natural and spontaneous belief is to him, as it were, a law from without which he has received, not accepted; which he obeys by instinct without having given it any intimate and personal assent. {161} It suffices for the exigencies of his life; it guides him, admonishes him, impels him, or checks him; but without, so to say, any concurrence on his own part, without giving birth in him to the sentiment that any active, energetic, or powerful principle is stirring within him, without procuring him the profound joy of contemplating, loving, adoring the truth which reigns over him. _Faith_, on the contrary, has this power; faith is not science, neither is it ignorance; the mind which faith penetrates has never yet, perhaps, rendered a true account to itself of that in which it has faith; and, perhaps, never will do so; but the mind is, nevertheless, certain of it; to the mind it is present, living; it is no longer a general belief, a law of human nature which governs the moral man, as the law of gravitation governs bodies; it is a personal conviction, a truth which the moral man has made his own by force of contemplation, of voluntary obedience, and love. Henceforth this truth does much more than suffice to his life, it satisfies his soul; it does much more than direct him, it enlightens him. {162} How many, for instance, live under the empire of a natural and instinctive belief that moral good and moral evil exist, without our being able to affirm that they have _faith_ in them. Such belief is in them, as it were, a master undisputed; to whom, nevertheless, they render no homage, whom they obey without seeing and without loving. But if a circumstance, a cause, however trivial, revealing, so to say, the conscience to itself, should attract and fix their attention upon this distinction between moral good and evil, which is a spontaneous law of their nature; should they knowingly acknowledge and accept it as their legitimate master, should their intelligence honour itself by comprehending it, and their liberty do itself honour by obeying it; should they feel their soul, as it were, the sanctuary of a sacred law, as the focus into which this truth concentrates and establishes itself in order thence to diffuse its rays of light; this is no longer simple natural belief, it is _faith_. {163}