Chapter XIX: Section I: Smell (14)

Thus, suppose I say, "Man is rational," and that I choose to expound it, without the aid of the word animal, understood; what is there in the case? The word "man," marks a certain cluster of ideas. "Rational" marks a portion of that cluster. In the {391} cluster marked "man," the cluster marked "rational" is included. To recognise this, is also called believing the proposition. But to have one cluster of ideas, and know what it is; then another, and know what it is, is merely to have the two clusters. To have a second cluster, part of a first, and to know that it is a part of the first, is the same thing.

The peculiar property of that class of words to which "Rational" belongs, must here be recollected. They are the _connotative_ class. Beside marking some thing peculiarly, they mark something else in conjunction; and this last, they are said to _connote_. Thus the word "rational," beside the part of the cluster, man, which it peculiarly marks, connotes, or marks in conjunction with it, the part included under the word animal

It will be easy to apply the same explanation to all other cases. I say, the rose is red. Red is a connotative term, distinctively marking the idea of red. The idea of red is part of the cluster I mark by the word rose.

Take a more obscure expression; Fire burns. It is very obvious, that in the cluster of ideas I mark by the word fire, the idea of burning is included. To have the idea, "fire," therefore, and the idea "burning," called up by the names standing in predication, is to believe the proposition.

The Predications, "Virtue is lovely," "Vice is hateful," and the like, all admit of a similar exposition. In the cluster "virtue," the idea of loveliness is included; in the cluster "vice," that of hatefulness is included. Such propositions, therefore, merely say, that what is a part of a thing, is a part of it. The {392} two words call up the two ideas; and to have two ideas, one a part of another, and know that one is part of another, is not two things, but one and the same thing. To have the idea of rose, and the idea of red, and to know that red makes part of rose, is not two things, but one and the same thing.

Little more is necessary to explain this case of Belief in the truth of Propositions. Propositions are formed, either of general names, or particular names, that is, names of individuals. Propositions consisting of general names are by far the most numerous class, and by far the most important. The preceding exposition embraces them all. They are all merely verbal; and the Belief is nothing more than recognition of the coincidence, entire or partial, of two general names.

The case of Propositions formed of particular names, is different, and yet remains to be explained. "Mr. Brougham made a speech in the House of Commons on such a day." The Predicate, "making a speech in the House of Commons," is neither general, so as to include the subject, "Mr. Brougham," as in a species; nor is the cluster of ideas, marked by the predicate, included in the cluster marked by the subject, as a part in its whole. The proposition marks a case either of experience, or of testimony. If I heard the speech, the proposition is an expression of the Memory of an event; Mr. Brougham, antecedent, and making a speech, consequent; and the Belief of the Proposition, is another name for the Memory of the Event. If I did not hear it, Belief of the proposition, is belief in the testimony of those who say they heard it.

{393} As all propositions relating to individual objects are, after this manner, marks either of other men's testimony, or of our own experience, what belief, in these cases, is, has already been explained.

Propositions relating to individuals may be expressions either of past, or of future events. Belief in past events, upon our own experience, is memory; upon other men's experience, is Belief in testimony; both of them resolved into association. Belief in future events, is the inseparable association of like consequents with like antecedents.

It is not deemed necessary to unfold these associations. It has been already done. It seems enough, if they are indicated here.[107] [108]

[Bain's footnote 107: The author has treated in different places several questions intimately allied. These are:--

1. The essential nature of the state of mind called Belief, the mental region whence it springs, or the phenomena that it is to be classed with--whether Intellect, Feeling, or Will.

2. The belief in the Past, and the belief in the Future; in what respect they differ from belief in the present. Inseparably implicated with this, if not prior to it and preparatory to it, is the difference between ideas of Memory and ideas of Imagination.

3. The nature of our continuous Mental Life, or Identity; or what is meant by the Permanent Existence of Mind.

The chapters on Memory, and on Belief, and the section on Identity (Chap. XIV.), all treat of these questions, and contain profound original views on them all.

As regards the nature of Belief, he errs (in common with philosophers generally) in calling it a purely intellectual state. The consequence is to mar the explanations of the other points.

He displays a remarkably just and penetrating insight into the differences between Memory and Imagination, and between {394} our own self or Personality, and the personality of others; whereby he fully accounts for what is involved in Personal Identity.

To resolve the difficult phenomenon of Belief in Memory, of which the belief in the Permanent Existence of Mind is merely another expression, we must clear up the foundations of the state of Belief in general.

The prevailing error on this subject consists in regarding Belief as mainly a fact of the Intellect, with a certain participation of the feelings. The usual assumption is, that if a thing is conceived in a sufficiently vivid manner, or if two things are strongly associated in the mind, the state of belief is thereby induced.

A better clue to the real character of belief is found in the connexion between faith and works. The practical test applied to a man's belief in a certain matter, is his acting upon it. A capitalist's trust in the soundness of a project, is shown by his investing his money.

In its essential character, Belief is a phase of our active nature,--otherwise called the Will. Our tendency to action, under special circumstances, assumes the aspect called belief; as in other circumstances, it takes the form of Desire, and in a third situation, appears as Intention; none of all which are essential to voluntary action in its typical form.

The state of belief or of disbelief is manifested when we are pursuing an Intermediate End. In masticating something sweet, the fruition of the sweetness sustains the energy of the will; there is no case for the believing function properly so called, any more than there is for Desire, Deliberation, or Resolution. In going to a shop to purchase sweets, there is wanting this immediate support of the voluntary energies; the support grows out of an ideal state, the anticipation of the pleasure of sweetness; this state is called Belief. We are said to believe that what we are going to purchase will impart an agreeable sensation. The state is one of degree; we may have a strong belief or a weak belief; the strength having no other measure than the energy of pursuit inspired by it. If we {395} follow the intermediate end with all the avidity shown when we are realizing the full actuality, we have the perfect belief that what we aim at will bring the actuality. If, as often happens, we are less strongly moved than this, our belief is said to be so much weaker. Or, the comparison may be expressed in a different form. If two things are connected together as means and end; and, if on attaining the means, we feel as much elated (the end being something good) as if we had attained the end, then our belief is at the maximum; if less so, our belief is less. The promise made to us by one man gives all the satisfaction of the performance; the promise of another man gives a very inferior satisfaction; the comparison measures our comparative trust in the two men.

So far the matter seems plain. The real difficulty lies in assigning the mental origin or seat of the believing attitude. The view to be maintained in this note is, that the state of belief is identical with the activity or active disposition of the system, at the moment, and with reference to the thing believed. Now as there are various sources of activity, so there are various sources of belief. These are:--First, Spontaneous Activity, or the mere overflow of energy growing out of the nourishment of the system. Secondly, Voluntary Action, in the strictest signification, or the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, under the stimulus of one or other of those states. Thirdly, the tendency of an Idea to become an Actuality, the degree of which tendency accords with the mental excitement attending the idea. Fourthly, the addition of Habit to all the others. Under every one of these four influences, we are prompted to act, and in the same degree disposed to believe. Not one of the tendencies is any guarantee for the truth of the thing believed; which is a somewhat grave consequence of the theory contended for.

It will now be asked, in what acceptation, or under what circumstances, does mere activity, no matter how arising, constitute, or amount to, the state of belief. There are certain situations where the two states are on the surface the same; the fact of going along a certain road implicates the belief that {396} a certain destination will be reached. Nay, farther, a great amount of natural energy would sustain a vigorous pace, irrespective of the certainty of the goal; while physical feebleness would make one languid, however strong the evidence of the distant good. All this shows that the mental state called believing is of little use without the active power, and that the active power readily simulates the believing state, and makes it seem greater or less than it really is.

Let us now look at the question in another light. Having a natural fund of activity, with or without the addition of proper volitional impulses, we commence moving in a certain direction, no matter what. We are not necessarily urged to move by any prospect of what we are to find. We act somehow, because action comes upon us; and we take the consequences. Suppose, however, that we encounter a check, in the form of obstruction or pain: this stops our activity in that direction, but does not prevent it from taking another direction. Now, not only does the actual pain arrest our steps, but also the memory of it (if the circumstances are such as to give it a certain degree of strength) is deterring. We avoid that track in the future. With reference to it there is generated a voluntary activity and determination, containing the whole essence of belief; namely, the avoidance of a certain course, before the point of actual pain. This is, to all intents, belief on the side of prospective harm. Equally important is it to remark, that wherever we have not experienced any positive harm, check, or obstruction, we go on as readily and as energetically as ever. Our natural state of mind, our primitive start is tantamount to full confidence or belief; which is broken in upon, only after hostile experiences; by these, the original condition of implicit confidence is impaired; and in certain directions, a positive anticipation or determining volition and belief of evil is substituted. An animal born on a summer morning, and able to move about from the first, would not anticipate darkness; it would behave exactly as if light were never intermitted. A few days experience makes an {397} in-road on this primitive confidence, and modifies it to suit the facts.

Let us add another circumstance to the foregoing example. Instead of the individual moving blindly on, by mere exuberance or spontaneity, let the movement be favoured by bringing pleasure at every step. In this situation, the whole force of the spontaneity at the time, and the whole force of the will (proportioned to the stimulating pleasure), sustain the movements at a more energetic pace; and there is nothing to counter-work them. The mental disposition is now equivalent to the highest confidence; there is no hesitation, no distrust, nothing but exuberant unrestrained activity. Neither scepticism as to the unknown future, nor a demand for assurance that the present condition is to last, is entertained by the mind. The individual does not inquire whether a precipice, or the lair of a devouring beast be on the track. The ignorance is at once bliss and belief.

Here, then, we may discern the original tendency of the mind as regards belief. To have gone a certain way with safety and with fruition, is an ample inducement to continue in that particular path. The situation contains all that is meant by full and unbounded confidence that the future and the distant will be exactly what the present is. The primary impulse of every creature is at the farthest remove from a procedure according to Logic. In the beginning, confidence is at its maximum; the course of education is towards abating, and narrowing it, so as to adapt it to the fact of things. Every check is a lesson, destroying to a certain extent the over-vaulting assurance of the natural mind, and planting a belief in evil, at points where originally flourished only the illimitable belief in good.

There is thus wrapped up, in the active impulses of our nature, a power of credulity leading us habitually to overstep the experience of the present. We believe in the uniformity of nature with a vengeance. We have to be schooled by adverse encounters, before we are brought within the limits of the real uniformity. Our natural credulity is equally excessive {398} on the side of evil and on the side of good; where we have once suffered we expect always to suffer. In short, whereas to the logician, there is a great gulf between the present and future, the known and the unknown, to the natural man there is not even a break. The early mind laughs the logician's gulf to scorn. All that science or logic has been able to do is to show that at certain points the assumed uniformity is broken in upon; tractable and docile minds learn to respect these exceptions; but wherever an outlet exists, with no barrier, or express prohibition, not only is that outlet followed, it is followed with all the pristine impetuosity of our active nature. The ordinary logician, over-awed by this force of determination, seldom asserts the principle that the present can by no logical implication contain the future, that a present reality holds in itself no warrant for the unknown past, the distant or the future. The barrier that this principle would interpose to our inferences has been carried by assault; the gordian knot is always cut with the sword.

From the point of view of the logician, a serious difficulty attaches to our belief in the Memory of the Past; the psychologist can refer it to the incontinence of the mind, in moving freely away from the present in any direction, in accounting the step next to be entered upon in the absence of impediment, as secure as the one actually taken.

Let us consider the process first by reverting to the anticipation of the Future. That a state of things now begun will continue indefinitely is what the mind not only assumes but proceeds upon with a vehemence proportioned to its active endowments and dispositions, until admonished to the contrary by the experience of being checked. All instruction, or corroborating information, is dispensed with at the outset: the burden is always laid upon the denier. Of this tendency of the mind the examples are innumerable, and need only to be indicated. In the default of evidence, on one side, and against what ought to be considered evidence on the other side, we believe that, as we feel now, so we shall feel always. And our belief is not simply giving the benefit of any doubt there may {399} be to the opinion we incline to; it is a powerful impulse, counteracted only by a severe and protracted discipline. Also, we believe that our own feelings exactly measure and correspond to the feelings of every one else. Very few are ever brought within the limits of the actual truth on this point; the primitive tendency is not met by a sufficient force of the requisite education.

It is the belief in the future that offers the simplest and clearest example of the mind's tendency to overleap the actual, to see no hard line between the present and the remote. The belief in nature's continuance and uniformity has always been in excess. From the very same tendency springs whatever belief we have of our own continued existence and identity. We make light of the difference between the conceived future and the real present.

Much more subtlety attends the Belief in Memory: the meaning of which is, that, whereas certain ideas recalled by memory are, _de facto_, ideas, or mental elements of a kind that imagination might furnish, they yet carry with them the belief that they represent what was once actuality, like any sensation of the present moment.

Let us first apply to the case the overweening instinct now fully set forth. To the logician, the past, however recent, is divided by a deep gulf from the present: the idea and the actuality can never be interchanged. It is not so with the mind following its native disposition. I have a present sensation of thirst; in that present consciousness, I have the highest attainable assurance; my action upon it is unhesitating and complete. Let that sensation, however, pass away for one minute, and there remains only the idea which, as a mere idea, by virtue of its recency, may be at its maximum strength. The point now to be explained is, why I believe not merely that I have the idea, which as a fact of present consciousness I am entitled to believe to the utmost, but that the idea was lately a full actuality as much as is my present state of satisfied sensation. The explanation seems to be, that we really make no radical difference between a present and a proximate past; {400} the march of the mind is to and fro, into the past and the future, with the same tendency to act out both, as to act out the present, assuming always the absence of a positive check or break. Such is the inveterate persistence of the natural activity, that the belief in the thirst when present (shown by action in accordance therewith) has a continuing efficacy second only to the belief in a still present state. At the moment of actual thirst, I, in the absence of corrective influences, (and to some degree in spite of these), would be disposed to believe that I always was, and always would be thirsty. The satisfaction that has followed reduces that belief to a fraction of its former state; and my utmost licence of assumption would be, (in the absence of contradictory beliefs) that all my past has been one thirst. The fact is, that, in these moments, when I give full licence to the sway of the idea, by voluntarily remitting attention to my new experience, that idea may swell out into a pitch of mental occupation hardly distinguishable from the real presence; in which case, my past self and my present self are, as it were, one and indivisible; they are freely interchanged; the actual consciousness compounds and contains them both.

Going another step backward, let us consider the state prior to the thirst; say a consciousness of heat and muscular fatigue. What proof have I that these penultimate states were present in continuity of time and in immediate precedence to the thirst, and are not vagaries of imagination, nor drawn from a remote past, accidentally revived? There seems no other evidence than that already given regarding the proximate state. In surrendering our mind to the idea still remaining, and so imparting a momentary quasi-reality to the state, we have an experience possessing the characteristic features of present reality.

Another consideration has to be mentioned. The state of transition from reality to reality is a distinct and unmistakeable experience. The transition from a present sensation of thirst to a present sensation of satisfied thirst is a march of its own kind--unique and explicit. There are in it attendant {401} circumstances, not to be confounded with the transition from a present to a past across a break. The recent and proximate state of thirst has a mode of continuity, a setting in contact with the present, such as did not belong to the thirst of yesterday, and still less belongs to the idea of the narrated thirst of another person. No sensation ever comes to us alone, or without a group of collaterals; and the collaterals of the formerly actual, and of the ideal never an actual, are wholly different. (This point has been well illustrated in the text, Chap. X. on Memory). The peculiar link whereby a present actual passes out of actuality into proximate actuality, when it is barely deprived of existence in the real, is a fact that remains and attaches to everything that has been actual; and the unbroken sequence of these is our past life of actuality, clearly marked out from every aggregate of ideas indiscriminately culled and united in a whole of imagination. This last process has its own distinctive collaterals; it is accompanied by numerous shocks of agreement in difference, under the law of similarity; but we do not confound these or other accompaniments with the gliding movement of the mind over the chronological past. Thus to take the extreme instance. We can assume another person's mental state (to a certain degree); and yet we do not fuse that with our own identity. There is a broad line of demarcation between each one's experience that they term their actual, and the assumption of a second person's experience, say of thirst, of fear, of curiosity. Our own past has continuity and fusion, in itself, and a peculiar set of circumstantial surroundings; in general, too, it is easy to remember. The other person's experience is received through a machinery of objective signs, laboriously interpreted, and not realized with the collaterals of an experience of our own; it is shorn of all the beams of our own personality, whether in the present or in the recollected past.

The distinction now drawn, (substantially what is exemplified at length in the chapter referred to,) is confirmed by what happens on occasions when memory and imagination are confounded. When a fact is long past, and all but forgotten, {402} the oblivion overtakes the evidentiary collaterals, the marks of continuity that link together what has been one actual state to what has been another actual state. I remember having had the idea or purpose to say or to do something on a certain occasion; but I do not remember whether I actually did or said the thing. The memory of the occasion is incomplete; the links are snapped that connect that idea with my remembered acting at the time referred to; it is not in its place in that authenticated series; and it is not associated with the collateral circumstances that always attend an actual transaction. On the other hand, as is well remarked in the chapter quoted, imagination may simulate remembered reality, when there is wanting the real memory that would people the occasion with authentic circumstances, and when the imagination has been excited and exercised so as to include in its compass the collaterals that go with an experience in the actual.--_B._]

[Editor's footnote 108: The analysis of Belief presented in this chapter, brings out the conclusion that all cases of Belief are simply cases of indissoluble association: that there is no generic distinction, but only a difference in the strength of the association, between a case of belief and a case of mere imagination: that to believe a succession or coexistence between two facts is only to have the ideas of the two facts so strongly and closely associated, that we cannot help having the one idea when we have the other.

If this can be proved, it is the greatest of all the triumphs of the Association Psychology. To first appearance, no two things can be more distinct than thinking of two things together, and believing that they are joined together in the outward world. Nevertheless, that the latter state of mind is only an extreme case of the former, is, as we see, the deliberate doctrine of the author of the Analysis; and it has also in its favour the high psychological authority of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Mr. Bain, in the preceding note, as well as in his systematic work, looks at the phenomenon from another side, and pronounces that what constitutes Belief is the power which an {403} idea has obtained over the Will. It is well known and understood that a mere idea may take such possession of the mind as to exercise an irresistible control over the active faculties, even independently of Volition, and sometimes in opposition to it. This, which Mr. Bain calls the power of a Fixed Idea, is exemplified in the cases of what is called fascination: the impulse which a person looking from a precipice sometimes feels to throw himself down it; and the cases of crimes said to have been committed by persons who abhor them, because that very horror has filled their minds with an intense and irrepressible idea of the act. Since an idea is sometimes able to overpower volition, it is no wonder that an idea should determine volition; as it does whenever we, under the influence of the idea of a pleasure or of a pain, will that which obtains for us the pleasure or averts the pain. In this voluntary action, our conduct is grounded upon a relation between means and an end; (that is, upon a constant conjunction of facts in the way of causation, ultimately resolvable into a case of resemblance and contiguity): in common and unanalytical language, upon certain laws of nature on which we rely. Our reliance is the consequence of an association formed in our minds between the supposed cause and its effect, resulting either from personal experience of their conjunction, from the teachings of other people, or from accidental appearances. Now, according to Mr. Bain, when this association between the means and the end, the end calling up the idea of the means, arrives at the point of giving to the idea thus called up a command over the Will, it constitutes Belief. We believe a thing, when we are ready to act on the faith of it; to face the practical consequences of taking it for granted: and therein lies the distinction between believing two facts to be conjoined, and merely thinking of them together. Thus far Mr. Bain: and with this I fully agree. But something is still wanting to the completeness of the analysis. The theory as stated, distinguishes two antecedents, by a difference not between themselves, but between their consequents. But when the consequents differ, the antecedents cannot be the same. An association {404} of ideas is or is not a Belief, according as it has or has not the power of leading us to voluntary action: this is undeniable: but when there is a difference in the effects there must be a difference in the cause: the association which leads to action must be, in some respect or other, different from that which stops at thought. The question, therefore, raised, and, as they think, resolved, by the author of the Analysis and by Mr. Spencer, still demands an answer. Does the difference between the two cases consist in this, that in the one case the association is dissoluble, in the other it is so much more closely riveted, by repetition, or by the intensity of the associated feelings, as to be no longer dissoluble? This is the question we are compelled to face.

I.

In the first place, then, it may be said--If Belief consisted in an indissoluble association, Belief itself would be indissoluble. An opinion once formed could never afterwards be destroyed or changed. This objection is good against the _word_ indissoluble. But those who maintain the theory do not mean by an indissoluble association, one which nothing that can be conceived to happen could possibly dissolve. All our associations of ideas would probably be dissoluble, if experience presented to us the associated facts separate from one another. If we have any associations which are, in practice, indissoluble, it can only be because the conditions of our existence deny to us the experiences which would be capable of dissolving them. What the author of the Analysis means by indissoluble associations, are those which we cannot, by any mental effort, at present overcome. If two ideas are, at the present time, so closely associated in our minds, that neither any effort of our own, nor anything else which can happen, can enable us now to have the one without its instantly raising up the other, the association is, in the author's sense of the term, indissoluble. There would be less risk of misunderstanding if we were to discard the word indissoluble, and confine ourselves to the expression which the author employs as its equivalent, inseparable. This I will henceforth do, and {405} we will now enquire whether Belief is nothing but an inseparable association.

In favour of this supposition there is the striking fact, that an inseparable association very often suffices to command belief. There are innumerable cases of Belief for which no cause can be assigned, except that something has created so strong an association between two ideas that the person cannot separate them in thought. The author has given a large assortment of such cases, and has made them tell with great force in support of his theory. Locke, as the author mentions, had already seen, that this is one of the commonest and most fertile sources of erroneous thought; deserving to be placed high in any enumeration of Fallacies. When two things have long been habitually thought of together, and never apart, until the association between the ideas has become so strong that we have great difficulty, or cannot succeed at all, in separating them, there is a strong tendency to believe that the facts are conjoined in reality; and when the association is closer still, that their conjunction is what is called Necessary. Most of the schools of philosophy, both past and present, are so much under the influence of this tendency, as not only to justify it in principle, but to elect it into a Law of Things. The majority of metaphysicians have maintained, and even now maintain, that there are things which, by the laws of intelligence, cannot be separated in thought, and that these things are not only always united in fact, but united by necessity: and, again, other things, which cannot be united in thought--which cannot be thought of together, and that these not only never do, but it is impossible they ever should, coexist in fact. These supposed necessities are the very foundation of the Transcendental schools of metaphysics, of the Common Sense school, and many others which have not received distinctive names. These are facts in human nature and human history very favourable to the supposition that Belief is but an inseparable association, or at all events that an inseparable association suffices to create Belief.

On the contrary side of the question it may be urged, that {406} the inseparable associations which are so often found to generate Beliefs, do not generate them in everybody. Analytical and philosophical minds often escape from them, and resist the tendency to believe in an objective conjunction between facts merely because they are unable to separate the ideas. The author's typical example of an inseparable association, (and there can be none more suited to the purpose,) is the association between sensations of colour and the tangible magnitudes, figures, and distances, of which they are signs, and which are so completely merged with them into one single impression, that we believe we see distance, extension, and figure, though all we really see is the optical effects which accompany them, all the rest being a rapid interpretation of natural signs. The generality of mankind, no doubt, and all men before they have studied the subject, believe what the author says they do; but a great majority of those who have studied the subject believe otherwise: they believe that a large portion of the facts which we seem to see, we do not really see, but instantaneously infer. Yet the association remains inseparable in these scientific thinkers as in others: the retinal picture suggests to them the real magnitude, in the same irresistible manner as it does to other people. To take another of the author's examples: when we look at a distant terrestrial object through a telescope, it appears nearer; if we reverse the telescope it appears further off. The signs by which we judge of distance from us, here mislead, because those signs are found in conjunction with real distances widely different from those with which they coexist in our ordinary experience. The association, however, persists, and is irresistible, in one person as much as in another; for every one recognises that the object, thus looked at, _seems_ nearer, or farther off, than we know it to be. But does this ever make any of us, except perhaps an inexperienced child, _believe_ that the object is at the distance at which we seem to see it? The inseparable association, though so persistent and powerful as to create in everybody an optical illusion, creates no _de_lusion, but leaves our belief as conformable to the realities of fact as if no such illusive appearance had presented {407} itself. Cases similar to this are so frequent, that cautious and thoughtful minds, enlightened by experience on the misleading character of inseparable associations, learn to distrust them, and do not, even by a first impulse, believe a connexion in fact because there is one in thought, but wait for evidence.

Following up the same objection, it may be said that if belief is only an inseparable association, belief is a matter of habit and accident, and not of reason. Assuredly an association, however close, between two ideas, is not a sufficient _ground_ of belief; is not _evidence_ that the corresponding facts are united in external nature. The theory seems to annihilate all distinction between the belief of the wise, which is regulated by evidence, and conforms to the real successions and coexistences of the facts of the universe, and the belief of fools, which is mechanically produced by any accidental association that suggests the idea of a succession or coexistence to the mind: a belief aptly characterized by the popular expression, believing a thing because they have taken it into their heads.

Indeed, the author of the Analysis is compelled by his theory to affirm that we actually believe in accordance with the misleading associations which generate what are commonly called illusions of sense. He not only says that we believe we see figure and distance--which the great majority of psychologists since Berkeley do not believe; but he says, that in the case of ventriloquy "we cannot help believing" that the sound proceeds from the place, of which the ventriloquist imitates the effect; that the sound of bells opposed by the wind, not only appears farther off, but is believed to come from farther off, although we may know the exact distance from which it comes; that "in passing on board ship, another ship at sea, we _believe_ that she has all the motion, we none:" nay even, that when we have turned ourselves round with velocity several times, "we believe that the world is turning round." Surely it is more true to say, as people generally do say, "the world _seems_ to us to turn round." To me these cases appear so many experimental proofs, that the tendency of an inseparable association to generate belief, even when that {408} tendency is fully effectual in creating the irresistible appearance of a state of things that does not really exist, may yet be impotent against reason, that is, against preponderant evidence.

In defence of these paradoxes, let us now consider what the author of the Analysis might say. One thing he would certainly say: that the belief he affirms to exist in these cases of illusion, is but a momentary one; with which the belief entertained at all other times may be at variance. In the case, for instance, of those who, from an early association formed between darkness and ghosts, feel terror in the dark though they have a confirmed disbelief in ghosts, the author's opinion is that there is a temporary belief, at the moment when the terror is felt. This was also the opinion of Dugald Stewart: and the agreement (by no means a solitary one) between two thinkers of such opposite tendencies, reminds one of the saying "Quand un Français et un Anglais sont d'accord, il faut bien qu'ils aient raison." Yet the author seems to adopt this notion not from observation of the case, but from an antecedent opinion that "dread implies belief, and an uncontrollable belief," which, he says, "we need not stay to prove." It is to be wished, in this case, that he had stayed to prove it: for it is harder to prove than he thought. The emotion of fear, the physical effect on the nervous system known by that name, may be excited, and I believe often is excited, simply by terrific imaginations. That these imaginations are, even for a moment, mistaken for menacing realities, may be true, but ought not to be assumed without proof. The circumstance most in its favour (one not forgotten by the author) is that in dreams, to which may be added hallucinations, frightful ideas are really mistaken for terrible facts. But dreams are states in which all other sensible ideas are mistaken for outward facts. Yet sensations and ideas are intrinsically different, and it is not the normal state of the human mind to confound the one with the other.

Besides, this supposition of a momentary belief in ghosts breaking in upon and interrupting an habitual and permanent belief that there are no ghosts, jars considerably with the {409} doctrine it is brought to support, that belief is an inseparable association. According to that doctrine, here are two inseparable associations, which yet are so far from exclusively possessing the mind, that they alternate with one another, each Inseparable implying the separation of the other Inseparable. The association of darkness with the absence of ghosts must be anything but inseparable, if there only needs the presence of darkness to revive the contrary association. Yet an association so very much short of inseparable, is accompanied, at least in the absence of darkness, by a full belief. Darkness is in this case associated with two incompatible ideas, the idea of ghosts and that of their absence, but with neither of them inseparably, and in consequence the two associations alternately prevail, as the surrounding circumstances favour the one or the other; agreeably to the laws of Compound Association laid down with great perspicuity and reach of thought by Mr. Bain in his systematic treatise.

To the argument, that the inseparable associations which create optical and other illusions, do not, when opposed by reason, generate the false belief, the author's answer would probably be some such as the following. When the rational thinker succeeds in resisting the belief, he does so by more or less completely overcoming the inseparableness of the association. Associations may be conquered by the formation of counter-associations. Mankind had formerly an inseparable association between sunset and the motion of the sun, and this in separable association compelled them to believe that in the phenomenon of sunset the sun moves and the earth is at rest. But Copernicus, Galileo, and after them, all astronomers, found evidence, that the earth moves and the sun is at rest: in other words, certain experiences, and certain reasonings from those experiences, took place in their minds, the tendency of which was to associate sunset with the ideas of the earth in motion and the sun at rest. This was a counter-association, which could not coexist, at least at the same instant, with the previous association connecting sunset with the sun in motion and the earth at rest. But for a long time the new {410} associating influences could not be powerful enough to get the better of the old association, and change the belief which it implied. A belief which has become habitual, is seldom overcome but by a slow process. However, the experiences and mental processes that tended to form the new association still went on; there was a conflict between the old association and the causes which tended to produce a new one; until, by the long continuance and frequent repetition of those causes, the old association, gradually undermined, ceased to be inseparable, and it became possible to associate the idea of sunset with that of the earth moving and the sun at rest; whereby the previous idea of the sun moving and the earth at rest was excluded for the time, and as the new association grew in strength, was at last thrown out altogether. The argument should go on to say that after a still further prolongation of the new experiences and reasonings, the old association became impossible and the new one inseparable; for, until it became inseparable, there could, according to the theory, be no belief. And this, in truth, does sometimes happen. There are instances in the history of science, even down to the present day, in which something which was once believed to be impossible, and its opposite to be necessary, was first seen to be possible, next to be true, and finally came to be considered as necessarily true, and its opposite (once deemed necessary) as impossible, and even inconceivable; insomuch that it is thought by some that what was reputed an impossibility, might have been known to be a necessity. In such cases, the quality of inseparableness has passed, in those minds at least, from the old association to the new one. But in much the greatest number of cases the change does not proceed so far, and both associations remain equally possible. The case which furnished our last instance is an example. Astronomers, and all educated persons, now associate sunset with motion confined to the earth, and firmly believe this to be what really takes place; but they have not formed this association with such exclusiveness and intensity as to have become unable to associate sunset with motion of the sun. On the contrary, the visible appearance still suggests {411} motion of the sun, and many people, though aware of the truth, find that they cannot by any effort make themselves see sunset any otherwise than as the sinking of the sun below the earth. My own experience is different: I find that I can represent the phenomenon to myself in either light; I can, according to the manner in which I direct my thoughts, see sunset either as the earth tilting above the sun, or as the sun dipping below the earth: in the same manner as when a railway train in motion passes another at rest, we are able, if we prevent our eyes from resting on any third object, to imagine the motion as being either in the one train or in the other. How, then, can it be said that there is an inseparable association of sunset with the one mode of representation, and a consequent inability to associate it with the other? It is associated with both, and the one of the two associations which is nearest to being inseparable is that which belief does not accompany. The difference between different people in the ability to represent to themselves the phenomenon under either aspect, depends rather on the degree of exercise which they have given to their imagination in trying to frame mental pictures conformable to the two hypotheses, than upon those considerations of reason and evidence which yet may determine their belief.

The question still remains, what is there which exists in the hypothesis believed, and does not exist in the hypothesis rejected, when we have associations which enable our imagination to represent the facts agreeably to either hypothesis? In other words, what is Belief?

I think it must be admitted, that when we can represent to ourselves in imagination either of two conflicting suppositions, one of which we believe, and disbelieve the other, neither of the associations can be inseparable; and there must therefore be in the fact of Belief, which exists in only one of the two cases, something for which inseparable association does not account. We seem to have again come up, on a different side, to the difficulty which we felt in the discussion of Memory, in accounting for the distinction between a fact remembered, and the same fact imagined. There is a close parallelism between {412} the two problems. In both, we have the difference between a fact and a representation in imagination; between a sensation, or combination of sensations, and an idea, or combination of ideas. This difference we all accept as an ultimate fact. But the difficulty is this. Let me first state it as it presents itself in the case of Memory. Having in our mind a certain combination of ideas, in a group or a train, accompanying or succeeding one another; what is it which, in one case, makes us recognize this group or train as representing a group or train of the corresponding sensations, remembered as having been actually felt by us, while in another case we are aware that the sensations have never occurred to us in a group or train corresponding to that in which we are now having the ideas? This is the problem of Memory. Let me now state the problem of Belief, when the belief is not a case of memory. Here also we have ideas connected in a certain order in our own mind, which makes us think of a corresponding order among the sensations, and we believe that this similar combination of the sensations is a real fact: _i.e._, whether we ever felt it or not, we confidently expect that we should feel it under certain given conditions. In Memory, we believe that the realities in Nature, the sensations and combinations of sensations presented to us from without, _have_ occurred to us in an order which agrees with that in which we are representing them to ourselves in thought: in those cases of Belief which are not cases of Memory, we believe, not that they have occurred, but that they would have occurred, or would occur, in that order.

What is it that takes place in us, when we recognize that there is this agreement between the order of our ideas and the order in which we either had or might have had the sensations which correspond to them--that the order of the ideas represents a similar order either in our actual sensations, or in those which, under some given circumstances, we should have reason to expect? What, in short, is the difference _to our minds_ between thinking of a reality, and representing to ourselves an imaginary picture? I confess that I can perceive no escape from the opinion that the distinction is ultimate and primordial. {413} There is no more difficulty in holding it to be so, than in holding the difference between a sensation and an idea to be primordial. It seems almost another aspect of the same difference. The author himself says, in the chapter on Memory, that, a sensation and an idea being different, it is to be expected that the remembrance of having had a sensation should be different from the remembrance of having had an idea, and that this is a sufficient explanation of our distinguishing them. If this, then, is an original distinction, why should not the distinction be original between the remembrance of having had a sensation, and the actually having an idea (which is the difference between Memory and Imagination); and between the expectation of having a sensation, and the actually having an idea (which is the difference between Belief and Imagination)? Grant these differences, and there is nothing further to explain in the phenomenon of Belief. For every belief is either the memory of having had a sensation (or other feeling), or the expectation that we should have the sensation or feeling in some given state of circumstances, if that state of circumstances could come to be realized.

II.

That all belief is either Memory or Expectation, will be clearly seen if we run over all the different objects of Belief. The author has already done so, in order to establish his theory; and it is now necessary that we should do the same.

The objects of Belief are enumerated by the author in the following terms:--1. Events, real existences. 2. Testimony. 3. The truth of propositions. He intended this merely as a rough grouping, sufficient for the purpose if it includes everything: for it is evident that the divisions overlap one another, and it will be seen presently that the last two are but cases of the first.

Belief in events he further divides into belief in present events, in past events, and in future events. Belief in present events he subdivides into belief in immediate existences present to my senses, and belief in immediate existences not present {414} to my senses. We see by this that he recognises no difference, in a metaphysical sense, between existences and events, because he regards, with reason, objects as merely the supposed antecedents of events. The distinction, however, requires to be kept up, being no other than the fundamental difference between simultaneousness, and succession or change.

Belief in immediate existences present to my senses, is either belief in my sensations, or belief in external objects. Believing that I feel what I am at this moment feeling, is, as the author says, only another name for having the feeling; with the idea, however, of Myself, associated with it; of which hereafter.

The author goes on to analyse Belief in external objects present to our senses; and he resolves it into a present sensation, united by an irresistible association with the numerous other sensations which we are accustomed to receive in conjunction with it. The Object is thus to be understood as a complex idea, compounded of the ideas of various sensations which we have, and of a far greater number of sensations which we should expect to have if certain contingencies were realized. In other words, our idea of an object is an idea of a group of possibilities of sensation, some of which we believe we can realize at pleasure, while the remainder would be realized if certain conditions took place, on which, by the laws of nature, they are dependent. As thus explained, belief in the existence of a physical object, is belief in the occurrence of certain sensations, contingently on certain previous conditions. This is a state of mind closely allied to Expectation of sensations. For--though we use the name Expectation only with reference to the future, and even to the probable future--our state of mind in respect to what _may_ be future, and even to what _might have been_ future, is of the same general nature, and depends on the same principles, as Expectation. I believe that a certain event will positively happen, because the known conditions which always accompany it in experience have already taken place. I believe that another event will certainly happen _if_ the known conditions which always accompany it take place, and those conditions I can produce when I please. I believe {415} that a third event will happen if its conditions take place, but I must wait for those conditions; I cannot realize them at pleasure, and may never realize them at all. The first of these three cases is positive expectation, the other two are conditional expectation. A fourth case is my belief that the event would have happened at any former time if the conditions had taken place at that time. It is not consonant to usage to call this Expectation, but, considered as a case of belief, there is no essential difference between it and the third case. My belief that I should have heard Cicero had I been present in the Forum, and my belief that I shall hear Mr. Gladstone if I am present in the House of Commons, can nowise be regarded as essentially different phenomena. The one we call Expectation, the other not, but the mental principle operative in both these cases of belief is the same.