ed _the inferior classes_,
in the days when there were classes, where are now equal citizens in
various callings. I never starved in the People's famine; I never
groaned, personally, in the People's miseries; I never sweat with its
sweat; I was never benumbed with its cold. Why then, I repeat it, do I
hunger in its hunger, thirst with its thirst, warm under its sun,
freeze under its cold, grieve under its sorrows? Why should I not care
for it as little as for that which passes at the antipodes?--turn away
my eyes, close my ears, think of other things, and wrap myself up in
that soft, thick garment of indifference and egotism, in which I can
shelter myself, and indulge my separate personal tastes, without
asking whether, below me,--in street, garret, or cottage, there is a
rich People, or a beggar People; a religious People, or an atheistic
People; a People of idlers, or of workers; a People of Helots, or of
citizens?"

And whenever I have thus questioned myself, I have thus answered
myself:--"I love the people because I believe in God. For, if I did
not believe in God, what would the people be to me? I should enjoy at
ease that lucky throw of the dice, which chance had turned up for me,
the day of my birth; and, with a secret, savage joy, I should say,
'So much the worse for the losers!--the world is a lottery. Woe to
the conquered!'" I cannot, indeed, say this without shame and
cruelty,--for, I repeat it, _I believe in God_.

II.

"And what is there in common," you will say to me, "between your
belief in God and your love for the People?" I answer: My belief in
God is not that vague, confused, indefinite, shadowy sentiment which
compels one to suppose a principle because he sees consequences,--a
cause where he contemplates effects, a source where he sees the rush
of the inexhaustible river of life, of forms, of substances, absorbed
for ever in the ocean, and renewed unceasingly from creation. The
belief in God, which is thus perceived and conceived, is, so to
speak, only a mechanical sensation of the interior eye,--an instinct
of intelligence, in some sort forced and brutal,--an evidence, not
reasonable, not religious, not perfect, not meritorious; but like the
material evidence of light, which enters our eyes when we open them
to the day; like the evidence of sound which we hear when we listen
to any noise; like the evidence of touch when we plunge our limbs in
the waves of the sea, and shiver at the conta