2.  Men whose minds are debased, aged drivellers.  They are strictly orthodox.

3.  Those who believe only through the heart, like children, without going into all this network of apologetics.  I am very fond of them, and from an ideal point of view I admire them; but as we are dealing with a question of critique they do not count.  From the moral point of view, I should be one with them.

There are others who cannot be defined, who are unbelievers unknown to themselves.  Incredulity enters into their principles, but they do not push these principles to their logical consequences.  Others believe in a rhetorical way, because their favourite authors have held this opinion, which is a sort of classical and literary religion.  They believe in Christianity as the Sophists of the decadence believed in paganism.  I am sorry that I have not the time to complete this classification.

You mistrust individual reason when it endeavours to draw up a system of life.  Very good, give me a better system, and I will believe in it.  I follow up mine because I have not got a better one, and I often mutiny against it.

I am very indifferent with regard to the outward position in which all this will land me; I shall not attempt to give myself any fixed place.  If I happen to get placed, well and good.  If I meet with any who share my views we shall make common cause; if not, I must go alone.  I am very egotistical; left wholly to myself, I am quite indifferent to the views of other people.  I hope to earn bread and cheese.  The people who do not get to know me well class me as one of those with whom I have nothing in common; so much the worse, they will be all in the wrong.

In order to gain influence one must rally to a flag and be dogmatic.  So much the better for those who have the heart for it.  I prefer to keep my thoughts to myself and to avoid saying the thing which is not.

If by one of those revulsions which have already occurred this way of putting things comes into favour, so much the better.  People will rally to me, but I must decline to mix myself up with all this riffraff, I might have added another category to the classification I made just now:  that of the people who look upon action as the most important thing of all, and treat Christianity as a means of action.  They are men of commonplace intelligence compared to the thinker.  The latter is the Jupiter Olympius, the spiritual man who is the judge of all things and who is judged of none.  That the simple possess much that is true I can readily believe, but the shape in which they possess it cannot satisfy him whose reason is in proper proportion with his other faculties.  This faculty eliminates, discusses, and refines, and it is impossible to quench it.  I would only too gladly have done so if I could.  With regard to the cupio omnes fieri, my ideas are as follows.  I do not apply it to my liberty.  One should, as far as possible, so place oneself as to be ready to