Hope, the thing with feathers

According to Charles Péguy: 'La foi que j'aime le mieux, dit Dieu, c'est l'espérance.' [Le Porche du mystère de la deuxième vertu] It's a beautiful idea, although it's hard to shake the sense that all this really says is that hope is the faith that is loved best by Charles Péguy. We might, conceivably, rewrite it to purge this sentiment of its humanocentric sentimentalism: 'foi que j'aime le mieux, dit Dieu, c'est le transmission de l'information génétique.' Feathers have proved a very well fitted hereditary trait for some animals, after all.