for whose triumph Earth has toiled and prayed, are equally pernicious.
Behold in them the double-bladed axe with which you decapitate the
white old man whom you enthrone among your painted clouds! And now, to
me the axe, I wield it!"

Monsieur Becker and Wilfrid gazed at the young girl with something
like terror.

"To believe," continued Seraphita, in her Woman's voice, for the Man
had finished speaking, "to believe is a gift. To believe is to feel.
To believe in God we must feel God. This feeling is a possession
slowly acquired by the human being, just as other astonishing powers
which you admire in great men, warriors, artists, scholars, those who
know and those who act, are acquired. Thought, that budget of the
relations which you perceive among created things, is an intellectual
language which can be learned, is it not? Belief, the budget of
celestial truths, is also a language as superior to thought as thought
is to instinct. This language also can be learned. The Believer
answers with a single cry, a single gesture; Faith puts within his
hand a flaming sword with which he pierces and illumines all. The Seer
attains to heaven and descends not. But there are beings who believe
and see, who know and will, who love and pray and wait. Submissive,
yet aspiring to the kingdom of light, they have neither the aloofness
of the Believer nor the silence of the Seer; they listen and reply. To
them the doubt of the twilight ages is not a murderous weapon, but a
divining rod; they accept the contest under every form; they train
their tongues to every language; they are never angered, though they
groan; the acrimony of the aggressor is not in them, but rather the
softness and tenuity of light, which penetrates and warms and
illumines. To their eyes Doubt is neither an impiety, nor a blasphemy,