To believe, I repeat, is to place confidence in someone, and it has reference to a person.  I say that I know that there is an animal called the horse, and that it has such and such characteristics, because I have seen it; and I say that I believe in the existence of the giraffe or the ornithorhyncus, and that it possesses such and such qualities, because I believe those who assure me that they have seen it.  And hence the element of uncertainty attached to faith, for it is possible that a person may be deceived or that he may deceive us.

But, on the other hand, this personal element in belief gives it an effective and loving character, and above all, in religious faith, a reference to what is hoped for.  Perhaps there is nobody who would sacrifice his life for the sake of maintaining that the three angles of a triangle are together equal to two right angles, for such a truth does not demand the sacrifice of our life; but, on the other hand, there are many who have lost their lives for the sake of maintaining their religious faith.  Indeed it is truer to say that martyrs make faith than that faith makes martyrs.  For faith is not the mere adherence of the intellect to an abstract principle; it is not the recognition of a theoretical truth, a process in which the will merely sets in motion our faculty of comprehension; faith is an act of the will—­it is a movement of the soul towards a practical truth, towards a person, towards something that makes us not merely comprehend life, but that makes us live.[45]

Faith makes us live by showing us that life, although it is dependent upon reason, has its well-spring and source of power elsewhere, in something supernatural and miraculous.  Cournot the mathematician, a man of singularly well-balanced and scientifically equipped mind, has said that it is this tendency towards the supernatural and miraculous that gives life, and that when it is lacking, all the speculations of the reason lead to nothing but affliction of spirit (Traite de l’enchainement des idees fondamentales dans les sciences et dans l’histoire, Sec. 329).  And in truth we wish to live.

But, although we have said that faith is a thing of the will, it would perhaps be better to say that it is will itself—­the will not to die, or, rather, that it is some other psychic force distinct from intelligence, will, and feeling.  We should thus have feeling, knowing, willing, and believing or creating.  For neither feeling, nor intelligence, nor will creates; they operate upon a material already given, upon the material given them by faith.  Faith is the creative power in man.  But since it has a more intimate relation with the will than with any other of his faculties, we conceive it under the form of volition.  It should be borne in mind, however, that wishing to believe—­that is to say, wishing to create—­is not precisely the same as believing or creating, although it is its starting-point.