, he asked his father how long it was ago since
this had come unto him and the father replied that it was since he was &
child. And Jesus said unto him: "If thou canst believe, all things are
possible to him that believeth" (ver. 23). And then the father of the
epileptic or demoniac uttered these pregnant and immortal words: "Lord,
I believe; help thou mine unbelief!"--_Pisteyo, kyrie, boethei te
hapistia mou_ (ver. 24).

"Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!" A contradiction seemingly,
for if he believes, if he trusts, how is it that he beseeches the Lord
to help his lack of trust? Nevertheless, it is this contradiction that
gives to the heart's cry of the father of the demoniac its most profound
human value. His faith is a faith that is based upon incertitude.
Because he believes--that is to say, because he wishes to believe,
because he has need that his son should be cured--he beseeches the Lord
to help his unbelief, his doubt that such a cure could be effected. Of
such kind is human faith; of such kind was the heroic faith that Sancho
Panza had in his master, the knight Don Quijote de la Mancha, as I think
I have shown in my _Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho_; a faith based upon
incertitude, upon doubt. Sancho Panza was indeed a man, a whole and a
true man, and he was not stupid, for only if he had been stupid would he
have believed, without a shadow of doubt, in the follies of his master.
And his master himself did not believe in them without a shadow of
doubt, for neither was Don Quixote, though mad, stupid. He was at heart
a man of despair, as I think I have shown in my above-mentioned book.
And because he was a man of an heroical despair, the hero of that inward
and resigned despair, he stands as the eternal exemplar of every man
whose soul is the battle-ground of reason and immortal desire. Our Lord
Don Quixote is the prototype of the vitalist whose faith is based upon
uncertainty, and Sancho is the prototype of the rationalist who doubts
his own reason.

Tormented by torturing doubts, August Hermann Francke resolved to call
upon God, a God in whom he did not believe, or rather in whom he
believed that he did not believe, imploring Him to take pity upon him,
upon the poor pietist Francke, if perchance He really existed.[34] And
from a similar state of mind came the inspiration of the sonnet entitled
"The Atheist's Prayer," which is included in my _Rosario de Sonetos
Liricos_, and closes with these lines: