CHAPTER XII.

108The 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 precedingnote, as well as in his systematic work, looks at the phenomenon from another side, and pronounces that what constitutes Belief is the power which an403idea 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 association404of 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 thewordindissoluble. 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, and405we 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, that406the 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,seemsnearer, or farther off, than we know it to be. But does this ever make any of us, except perhaps an inexperienced child,believethat 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 nodelusion, but leaves our belief as conformable to the realities of fact as if no such illusive appearance had presented407itself. 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 sufficientgroundof belief; is notevidencethat 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, webelievethat 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 worldseemsto 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 that408tendency 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 the409doctrine 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 new410associating 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 suggests411motion 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 between412the 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,haveoccurred 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 differenceto our mindsbetween 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.413There 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 present414to 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 whichhereafter.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 whatmaybe future, and even to whatmight have beenfuture, 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 happenifthe known conditions which always accompany it take place, and those conditions I can produce when I please. I believe415that 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.The author goes on to say, that the belief that we should have the sensations if certain conditions were realized, that is, if we had certain other sensations, is merely an inseparable association of the two sets of sensations with one another, and their inseparable union with the idea of ourselves as having them. But I confess it seems to me that all this may exist in a case of simple imagination. The author would himself admit that the complex idea of the object, in all its fulness, may be in the mind without belief. What remains is its association with the idea of ourselves as percipients. But this also, I cannot but think, we may have in the case of an imaginary scene, when we by no means believe that any corresponding reality exists. Does the idea of our own personality never enter into the pictures in our imagination? Are we not ourselves present in the scenes which we conjure up in our minds? I apprehend we are as constantly present in them, and as conscious of our presence, as we are in contemplating a real prospect. In either case the vivacity of the other impressions eclipses, for the most part, the thought of ourselves as spectators, but not more so in the imaginary, than in the real, spectacle.It appears to me, then, that to account for belief in external416objects, we must postulate Expectation; and since all our expectations, whether positive or contingent, are a consequence of our Memory of the past (as distinguished from a representation in fancy), we must also postulate Memory. The distinction between a mere combination of ideas in thought, and one which recals to us a combination of sensations as actually experienced, always returns on our hands as an ultimate postulate.The author proceeds to shew how this idea of a mere group of sensations, actual or contingent, becomes knit up with an idea of a permanent Something, lying, as it were, under these sensations, and causing them; this further enlargement of the complex idea taking place through the intimate, or, as he calls it, inseparable association, generated by experience, which makes us unable to imagine any phenomenon as beginning to exist without something anterior to it which causes it. This explanation, seems to me quite correct as far as it goes; but, while it accounts for the difficulty we have in not ascribing our sensations to some cause or other, it does not explain why we accept, as in fact we do, the group itself as the cause. I have endeavoured to clear up this difficulty elsewhere (Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy), and in preference to going over the ground a second time, I subjoin, at the end of the volume, thechaptercontaining the explanation. That chapter supplies all that appears to me to be further necessary on the subject of belief in outward objects; which is thus shewn to be a case of Conditional Expectation.It is unnecessary to follow the author into the minute consideration of Belief in the existence of objects not present since the explanation already given equally applies to them. My belief in the present existence of St. Paul’s is correctly set forth by the author as consisting of the following elements: I believe that I have seen St. Paul’s: I believe that I shall see St. Paul’s, when I am again in St. Paul’s Churchyard: I believe that I should see St. Paul’s, if I were in St. Paul’s Churchyard at this instant. All this, as he justly remarks, is Memory or Expectation. And this, or some part of this, is417the whole of what is in any case meant by belief in the real existence of an external object. The author adds, I also believe that if any creature whose senses are analogous to my own, is now in St. Paul’s Churchyard, it has the present sensation of that edifice. But this belief is not necessary to my belief in the continued existence of St. Paul’s. For that, it suffices that I believe I should myself see it. My belief that other creatures would do so, is part of my belief in the real existence of other creatures like myself; which is no more mysterious, than our belief in the real existence of any other objects some of whose properties rest not on direct sensation, but on inference.Belief in past existences, when those existences have been perceived by ourselves, is Memory. When the past existences are inferred from evidence, the belief of them is not Memory, but a fact of the same nature as Expectation; being a belief that weshould have hadthe sensations if we had been cotemporary with the objects, and had been in the local position necessary for receiving sensible impressions from them.We now come to the case of Belief in testimony. But testimony is not itself an object of belief. The object of belief is what the testimony asserts. And so in the last of the author’s three cases, that of assent to a proposition. The object of belief, in both these cases, is an assertion. But an assertion is something asserted, and what is asserted must be a fact, similar to some of those of which we have already treated. According to the author, belief in an assertion is belief that two names are both of them names of the same thing: but this we have felt ourselves obliged todiscard, as an inadequate explanation of the import of any assertions, except those which are classed as merely verbal. Every assertion concerning Things, whether in concrete or in abstract language, is an assertion that some fact, or group of facts, has been, is, or may be expected to be, found, wherever a certain other fact, or group of facts, is found. Belief in this, is therefore either remembrance that we did have, or expectation that we shall have, or a belief of the same nature with expectation that in418some given circumstances we should have, or should have had, direct perception of a particular fact. Belief, therefore, is always a case either of Memory or of Expectation; including under the latter name conditional as well as positive expectation, and the state of mind similar to expectation which affects us in regard to whatwouldhave been a subject of expectation, if the conditions of its realization had still been possible.It may be objected, that we may believe in the real existence of things which are not objects of sense at all. We may. But we cannot believe in the real existence of anything which we do not conceive as capable of acting in some way upon our own or some other being’s consciousness; though the state of consciousness it produces may not be called a sensation. The existence of a thing means, to us, merely its capacity of producing an impression of some sort upon some mind, that is, of producing some state of consciousness. The belief, therefore, in its existence, is still a conditional expectation of something which we should, under some supposed circumstances, be capable of feeling.To resume: Belief, as I conceive, is more than an inseparable association, for inseparable associations do not always generate belief, nor does belief always require, as one of its conditions, an inseparable association: we can believe that to be true which we are capable of conceiving or representing to ourselves as false, and false what we are capable of representing to ourselves as true. The difference between belief and mere imagination, is the difference between recognising something as a reality in nature, and regarding it as a mere thought of our own. This is the difference which presents itself when Memory has to be distinguished from Imagination; and again when Expectation, whether positive or contingent (i.e. whether it be expectation that we shall, or only persuasion that in certain definable circumstances we should, have a certain experience) has to be distinguished from the mere mental conception of that experience.III.Let us examine, once more, whether the speculations in the text afford us any means of further analysing this difference.419The difference presents itself in its most elementary form in the distinction between a sensation and an idea. The authoradmitsthis distinction to be ultimate and primordial. “A sensation is different from an idea, only because it is felt to be different.” But, after having admitted that these two states or consciousness are distinguishable from each other in and by themselves, he adds, that they are also distinguishable by their accompaniments. “The accompaniments of a sensation are always generically different from those of an idea….. The accompaniments of a sensation, are all the simultaneousobjects of sensation, together with all those which, to a certain extent, both preceded and followed it. The accompaniments of an idea are not the simultaneous objects of sensation, butother ideas; namely, the neighbouring facts, antecedent and consequent, of the mental train.” There can be no doubt that in those individual cases in which ideas and sensations might be confounded, namely, when an idea reaches or approaches the vivacity of a sensation, the indication here pointed out helps to assure us that what we are conscious of is, nevertheless, only an idea. When, for instance, we awake from a dream, and open our eyes to the outward world, what makes us so promptly recognise that this and not the other is the real world, is that we find its phenomena connected in the accustomed order of our objects of sensation. But though this circumstance enables us, in particular instances, to refer our impression more instantaneously to one or the other class, it cannot be by this that we distinguish ideas at first from sensations; for the criterion supposes the distinction to be already made. If we judge a sensation to be a sensation because its accompaniments are other sensations, and an idea to be an idea because its accompaniments are other ideas, we must already be able to distinguish those other sensations from those other ideas.A similar remark is applicable to a criterion between sensations and ideas, incidentally laid down by Mr. Bain in the First Part of his systematic treatise. “A mere picture oridearemains the same whatever be our bodily position or420bodily exertions; the sensation that we call the actual is entirely at the mercy of our movements, shifting in every possible way according to the varieties of action that we go through.” (The Senses and the Intellect, 2nd ed. p. 381.) This test, like the author’s, may serve in cases of momentary doubt; but sensations in general must have been already distinguished from ideas, before we could have hit upon this criterion between them. If we had not already known the difference between a sensation and an idea, we never could have discovered that one of them is “at the mercy of our movements,” and that the other is not.It being granted that a sensation and an idea areipso factodistinguishable, the author thinks it no more than natural that “the copy of the sensation should be distinguishable from the revival of the idea, when they are both brought up by association.” But he adds, that there is another distinction between the memory of a sensation, and the memory of an idea, and it is this. In all Memory the idea of self forms part of the complex idea; but in the memory of sensation, the self which enters into the remembrance is “the sentient self, that is, seeing and hearing:” in the memory of an idea, it is “not the sentient self, but the conceptive self, self having an idea. But” (he adds) “myself percipient, and myself imagining, or conceiving, are two very different states of consciousness: of course the ideas of these states of consciousness, or these states revived by association, are very different ideas.”Concerning the fact there is no dispute. Myself percipient, and myself imagining or conceiving, are different states, because perceiving is a different thing from imagining; and being different states, the remembrance of them is, as might be expected, different. But the question is, in what does the difference between the remembrances consist? The author calls one of them theideaof myself perceiving, and the other theideaof myself imagining, and thinks there is no other difference. But how do the idea of myself having a sensation, and the idea of myself having an idea of that sensation, differ from one another? since in either case an idea of the sensation is all421that I am having now. The thought of myself perceiving a thing at a former time, and the thought of myself imagining the thing at that former time, are both at the present moment facts of imagination—are now merely ideas. In each case I have an ideal representation of myself, as conscious in a manner very similar in the two cases; though not exactly the same, since in the one case I remember to have been conscious of a sensation, in the other, to have been conscious only of an idea of that sensation: but, in either case, that past consciousness enters only as an idea, into the consciousness I now have by recollection. In what, then, as far as mere ideas are concerned, do my present mental representations of the two cases differ? Will it be said, that the idea of the sensation is one thing, the idea of the idea of the sensation another thing? Or are they both the same idea, namely, the idea of the sensation; and is the element that is present in the one case, but absent in the other, not an idea but something else? A difference there is admitted to be between the remembrance of having had a sensation, and the remembrance of having merely thought of the sensation, i.e. had the idea of it: is this difference a difference in the ideas I have in the two cases, or is the idea the same, but accompanied in the one case by something not an idea, which does not exist in the other? for if so, this something is a Belief.I have touched upon this question in a formernote, and expressed my inability to recognise, in the idea of an idea, anything but the idea itself; in the thought of a thought, anything but a repetition of the thought. My thought of Falstaff, as far as I can perceive, is not a copy but a repetition of the thought I had of him when I first read Shakespeare: not indeed an exact repetition, because all complex ideas undergo modification by time, some elements fading away, and new ones being added by reverting to the original sources or by subsequent associations; but my first mental image of Falstaff, and my present one, do not differ as the thought of a rose differs from the sight of one; as an idea of sensation differs from the sensation. On this point the author was perhaps of422the same opinion, since we find him contrasting the “copy” of the sensation with the “revival” of the idea, as if the latter was a case of simple repetition, the former not. It would have been well if he had made this point a subject of express discussion; for if his opinion upon it was what, from this passage, we may suppose it to have been, it involves a serious difficulty. If (he says) a sensation and an idea “are distinguishable in the having, it is likely that the copy of the sensation should be distinguishable from the revival of the idea.” But the copy of the sensation is the idea; so that, on this shewing, the idea is distinguishable from its own revival, that is, from the same idea when it occurs again. The author’s theory would thus require him to maintain that an idea revived is a specifically different idea, and not the same idea repeated: since otherwise the two states of mind, so far as regards the ideas contained in them, are undistinguishable, and it is necessary to admit the presence in Memory of some other element.Let us put another case. Instead of Falstaff, suppose a real person whom I have seen: for example General Lafayette. My idea of Lafayette is almost wholly, what my idea of Falstaff is entirely, a creation of thought: only a very small portion of it is derived from my brief experience of seeing and conversing with him. But I have a remembrance of having seen Lafayette, and no remembrance of having seen Falstaff, but only of having thought of him. Is it a sufficient explanation of this difference to say, that I have an idea of myself seeing and hearing Lafayette, and only an idea of myself thinking of Falstaff? But I can form a vivid idea of myself seeing and hearing Falstaff. I can without difficulty imagine myself in the field of Shrewsbury, listening to his characteristic soliloquy over the body of Hotspur; or in the tavern in the midst of his associates, hearing his story of his encounter with the men in buckram. When I recal the scene, I can as little detach it from the idea of myself as present, as I can in the case of most things of which I was really an eye-witness. The spontaneous presence of the idea of Myself in the423conception, is always that of myself as percipient. The idea of myself as in a state of mere imagination, only substitutes itself for the other when something reminds me that the scene is merely imaginary.I cannot help thinking, therefore, that there is in the remembrance of a real fact, as distinguished from that of a thought, an element which does not consist, as the author supposes, in a difference between the mere ideas which are present to the mind in the two cases. This element, howsoever we define it, constitutes Belief, and is the difference between Memory and Imagination. From whatever direction we approach, this difference seems to close our path. When we arrive at it, we seem to have reached, as it were, the central point of our intellectual nature, presupposed and built upon in every attempt we make to explain the more recondite phenomena of our mental being.—Ed.

108The 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 precedingnote, as well as in his systematic work, looks at the phenomenon from another side, and pronounces that what constitutes Belief is the power which an403idea 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 association404of 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 thewordindissoluble. 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, and405we 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, that406the 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,seemsnearer, or farther off, than we know it to be. But does this ever make any of us, except perhaps an inexperienced child,believethat 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 nodelusion, but leaves our belief as conformable to the realities of fact as if no such illusive appearance had presented407itself. 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 sufficientgroundof belief; is notevidencethat 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, webelievethat 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 worldseemsto 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 that408tendency 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 the409doctrine 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 new410associating 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 suggests411motion 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 between412the 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,haveoccurred 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 differenceto our mindsbetween 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.413There 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 present414to 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 whichhereafter.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 whatmaybe future, and even to whatmight have beenfuture, 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 happenifthe known conditions which always accompany it take place, and those conditions I can produce when I please. I believe415that 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.The author goes on to say, that the belief that we should have the sensations if certain conditions were realized, that is, if we had certain other sensations, is merely an inseparable association of the two sets of sensations with one another, and their inseparable union with the idea of ourselves as having them. But I confess it seems to me that all this may exist in a case of simple imagination. The author would himself admit that the complex idea of the object, in all its fulness, may be in the mind without belief. What remains is its association with the idea of ourselves as percipients. But this also, I cannot but think, we may have in the case of an imaginary scene, when we by no means believe that any corresponding reality exists. Does the idea of our own personality never enter into the pictures in our imagination? Are we not ourselves present in the scenes which we conjure up in our minds? I apprehend we are as constantly present in them, and as conscious of our presence, as we are in contemplating a real prospect. In either case the vivacity of the other impressions eclipses, for the most part, the thought of ourselves as spectators, but not more so in the imaginary, than in the real, spectacle.It appears to me, then, that to account for belief in external416objects, we must postulate Expectation; and since all our expectations, whether positive or contingent, are a consequence of our Memory of the past (as distinguished from a representation in fancy), we must also postulate Memory. The distinction between a mere combination of ideas in thought, and one which recals to us a combination of sensations as actually experienced, always returns on our hands as an ultimate postulate.The author proceeds to shew how this idea of a mere group of sensations, actual or contingent, becomes knit up with an idea of a permanent Something, lying, as it were, under these sensations, and causing them; this further enlargement of the complex idea taking place through the intimate, or, as he calls it, inseparable association, generated by experience, which makes us unable to imagine any phenomenon as beginning to exist without something anterior to it which causes it. This explanation, seems to me quite correct as far as it goes; but, while it accounts for the difficulty we have in not ascribing our sensations to some cause or other, it does not explain why we accept, as in fact we do, the group itself as the cause. I have endeavoured to clear up this difficulty elsewhere (Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy), and in preference to going over the ground a second time, I subjoin, at the end of the volume, thechaptercontaining the explanation. That chapter supplies all that appears to me to be further necessary on the subject of belief in outward objects; which is thus shewn to be a case of Conditional Expectation.It is unnecessary to follow the author into the minute consideration of Belief in the existence of objects not present since the explanation already given equally applies to them. My belief in the present existence of St. Paul’s is correctly set forth by the author as consisting of the following elements: I believe that I have seen St. Paul’s: I believe that I shall see St. Paul’s, when I am again in St. Paul’s Churchyard: I believe that I should see St. Paul’s, if I were in St. Paul’s Churchyard at this instant. All this, as he justly remarks, is Memory or Expectation. And this, or some part of this, is417the whole of what is in any case meant by belief in the real existence of an external object. The author adds, I also believe that if any creature whose senses are analogous to my own, is now in St. Paul’s Churchyard, it has the present sensation of that edifice. But this belief is not necessary to my belief in the continued existence of St. Paul’s. For that, it suffices that I believe I should myself see it. My belief that other creatures would do so, is part of my belief in the real existence of other creatures like myself; which is no more mysterious, than our belief in the real existence of any other objects some of whose properties rest not on direct sensation, but on inference.Belief in past existences, when those existences have been perceived by ourselves, is Memory. When the past existences are inferred from evidence, the belief of them is not Memory, but a fact of the same nature as Expectation; being a belief that weshould have hadthe sensations if we had been cotemporary with the objects, and had been in the local position necessary for receiving sensible impressions from them.We now come to the case of Belief in testimony. But testimony is not itself an object of belief. The object of belief is what the testimony asserts. And so in the last of the author’s three cases, that of assent to a proposition. The object of belief, in both these cases, is an assertion. But an assertion is something asserted, and what is asserted must be a fact, similar to some of those of which we have already treated. According to the author, belief in an assertion is belief that two names are both of them names of the same thing: but this we have felt ourselves obliged todiscard, as an inadequate explanation of the import of any assertions, except those which are classed as merely verbal. Every assertion concerning Things, whether in concrete or in abstract language, is an assertion that some fact, or group of facts, has been, is, or may be expected to be, found, wherever a certain other fact, or group of facts, is found. Belief in this, is therefore either remembrance that we did have, or expectation that we shall have, or a belief of the same nature with expectation that in418some given circumstances we should have, or should have had, direct perception of a particular fact. Belief, therefore, is always a case either of Memory or of Expectation; including under the latter name conditional as well as positive expectation, and the state of mind similar to expectation which affects us in regard to whatwouldhave been a subject of expectation, if the conditions of its realization had still been possible.It may be objected, that we may believe in the real existence of things which are not objects of sense at all. We may. But we cannot believe in the real existence of anything which we do not conceive as capable of acting in some way upon our own or some other being’s consciousness; though the state of consciousness it produces may not be called a sensation. The existence of a thing means, to us, merely its capacity of producing an impression of some sort upon some mind, that is, of producing some state of consciousness. The belief, therefore, in its existence, is still a conditional expectation of something which we should, under some supposed circumstances, be capable of feeling.To resume: Belief, as I conceive, is more than an inseparable association, for inseparable associations do not always generate belief, nor does belief always require, as one of its conditions, an inseparable association: we can believe that to be true which we are capable of conceiving or representing to ourselves as false, and false what we are capable of representing to ourselves as true. The difference between belief and mere imagination, is the difference between recognising something as a reality in nature, and regarding it as a mere thought of our own. This is the difference which presents itself when Memory has to be distinguished from Imagination; and again when Expectation, whether positive or contingent (i.e. whether it be expectation that we shall, or only persuasion that in certain definable circumstances we should, have a certain experience) has to be distinguished from the mere mental conception of that experience.III.Let us examine, once more, whether the speculations in the text afford us any means of further analysing this difference.419The difference presents itself in its most elementary form in the distinction between a sensation and an idea. The authoradmitsthis distinction to be ultimate and primordial. “A sensation is different from an idea, only because it is felt to be different.” But, after having admitted that these two states or consciousness are distinguishable from each other in and by themselves, he adds, that they are also distinguishable by their accompaniments. “The accompaniments of a sensation are always generically different from those of an idea….. The accompaniments of a sensation, are all the simultaneousobjects of sensation, together with all those which, to a certain extent, both preceded and followed it. The accompaniments of an idea are not the simultaneous objects of sensation, butother ideas; namely, the neighbouring facts, antecedent and consequent, of the mental train.” There can be no doubt that in those individual cases in which ideas and sensations might be confounded, namely, when an idea reaches or approaches the vivacity of a sensation, the indication here pointed out helps to assure us that what we are conscious of is, nevertheless, only an idea. When, for instance, we awake from a dream, and open our eyes to the outward world, what makes us so promptly recognise that this and not the other is the real world, is that we find its phenomena connected in the accustomed order of our objects of sensation. But though this circumstance enables us, in particular instances, to refer our impression more instantaneously to one or the other class, it cannot be by this that we distinguish ideas at first from sensations; for the criterion supposes the distinction to be already made. If we judge a sensation to be a sensation because its accompaniments are other sensations, and an idea to be an idea because its accompaniments are other ideas, we must already be able to distinguish those other sensations from those other ideas.A similar remark is applicable to a criterion between sensations and ideas, incidentally laid down by Mr. Bain in the First Part of his systematic treatise. “A mere picture oridearemains the same whatever be our bodily position or420bodily exertions; the sensation that we call the actual is entirely at the mercy of our movements, shifting in every possible way according to the varieties of action that we go through.” (The Senses and the Intellect, 2nd ed. p. 381.) This test, like the author’s, may serve in cases of momentary doubt; but sensations in general must have been already distinguished from ideas, before we could have hit upon this criterion between them. If we had not already known the difference between a sensation and an idea, we never could have discovered that one of them is “at the mercy of our movements,” and that the other is not.It being granted that a sensation and an idea areipso factodistinguishable, the author thinks it no more than natural that “the copy of the sensation should be distinguishable from the revival of the idea, when they are both brought up by association.” But he adds, that there is another distinction between the memory of a sensation, and the memory of an idea, and it is this. In all Memory the idea of self forms part of the complex idea; but in the memory of sensation, the self which enters into the remembrance is “the sentient self, that is, seeing and hearing:” in the memory of an idea, it is “not the sentient self, but the conceptive self, self having an idea. But” (he adds) “myself percipient, and myself imagining, or conceiving, are two very different states of consciousness: of course the ideas of these states of consciousness, or these states revived by association, are very different ideas.”Concerning the fact there is no dispute. Myself percipient, and myself imagining or conceiving, are different states, because perceiving is a different thing from imagining; and being different states, the remembrance of them is, as might be expected, different. But the question is, in what does the difference between the remembrances consist? The author calls one of them theideaof myself perceiving, and the other theideaof myself imagining, and thinks there is no other difference. But how do the idea of myself having a sensation, and the idea of myself having an idea of that sensation, differ from one another? since in either case an idea of the sensation is all421that I am having now. The thought of myself perceiving a thing at a former time, and the thought of myself imagining the thing at that former time, are both at the present moment facts of imagination—are now merely ideas. In each case I have an ideal representation of myself, as conscious in a manner very similar in the two cases; though not exactly the same, since in the one case I remember to have been conscious of a sensation, in the other, to have been conscious only of an idea of that sensation: but, in either case, that past consciousness enters only as an idea, into the consciousness I now have by recollection. In what, then, as far as mere ideas are concerned, do my present mental representations of the two cases differ? Will it be said, that the idea of the sensation is one thing, the idea of the idea of the sensation another thing? Or are they both the same idea, namely, the idea of the sensation; and is the element that is present in the one case, but absent in the other, not an idea but something else? A difference there is admitted to be between the remembrance of having had a sensation, and the remembrance of having merely thought of the sensation, i.e. had the idea of it: is this difference a difference in the ideas I have in the two cases, or is the idea the same, but accompanied in the one case by something not an idea, which does not exist in the other? for if so, this something is a Belief.I have touched upon this question in a formernote, and expressed my inability to recognise, in the idea of an idea, anything but the idea itself; in the thought of a thought, anything but a repetition of the thought. My thought of Falstaff, as far as I can perceive, is not a copy but a repetition of the thought I had of him when I first read Shakespeare: not indeed an exact repetition, because all complex ideas undergo modification by time, some elements fading away, and new ones being added by reverting to the original sources or by subsequent associations; but my first mental image of Falstaff, and my present one, do not differ as the thought of a rose differs from the sight of one; as an idea of sensation differs from the sensation. On this point the author was perhaps of422the same opinion, since we find him contrasting the “copy” of the sensation with the “revival” of the idea, as if the latter was a case of simple repetition, the former not. It would have been well if he had made this point a subject of express discussion; for if his opinion upon it was what, from this passage, we may suppose it to have been, it involves a serious difficulty. If (he says) a sensation and an idea “are distinguishable in the having, it is likely that the copy of the sensation should be distinguishable from the revival of the idea.” But the copy of the sensation is the idea; so that, on this shewing, the idea is distinguishable from its own revival, that is, from the same idea when it occurs again. The author’s theory would thus require him to maintain that an idea revived is a specifically different idea, and not the same idea repeated: since otherwise the two states of mind, so far as regards the ideas contained in them, are undistinguishable, and it is necessary to admit the presence in Memory of some other element.Let us put another case. Instead of Falstaff, suppose a real person whom I have seen: for example General Lafayette. My idea of Lafayette is almost wholly, what my idea of Falstaff is entirely, a creation of thought: only a very small portion of it is derived from my brief experience of seeing and conversing with him. But I have a remembrance of having seen Lafayette, and no remembrance of having seen Falstaff, but only of having thought of him. Is it a sufficient explanation of this difference to say, that I have an idea of myself seeing and hearing Lafayette, and only an idea of myself thinking of Falstaff? But I can form a vivid idea of myself seeing and hearing Falstaff. I can without difficulty imagine myself in the field of Shrewsbury, listening to his characteristic soliloquy over the body of Hotspur; or in the tavern in the midst of his associates, hearing his story of his encounter with the men in buckram. When I recal the scene, I can as little detach it from the idea of myself as present, as I can in the case of most things of which I was really an eye-witness. The spontaneous presence of the idea of Myself in the423conception, is always that of myself as percipient. The idea of myself as in a state of mere imagination, only substitutes itself for the other when something reminds me that the scene is merely imaginary.I cannot help thinking, therefore, that there is in the remembrance of a real fact, as distinguished from that of a thought, an element which does not consist, as the author supposes, in a difference between the mere ideas which are present to the mind in the two cases. This element, howsoever we define it, constitutes Belief, and is the difference between Memory and Imagination. From whatever direction we approach, this difference seems to close our path. When we arrive at it, we seem to have reached, as it were, the central point of our intellectual nature, presupposed and built upon in every attempt we make to explain the more recondite phenomena of our mental being.—Ed.

108The 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 precedingnote, as well as in his systematic work, looks at the phenomenon from another side, and pronounces that what constitutes Belief is the power which an403idea 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 association404of 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 thewordindissoluble. 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, and405we 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, that406the 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,seemsnearer, or farther off, than we know it to be. But does this ever make any of us, except perhaps an inexperienced child,believethat 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 nodelusion, but leaves our belief as conformable to the realities of fact as if no such illusive appearance had presented407itself. 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 sufficientgroundof belief; is notevidencethat 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, webelievethat 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 worldseemsto 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 that408tendency 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 the409doctrine 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 new410associating 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 suggests411motion 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 between412the 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,haveoccurred 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 differenceto our mindsbetween 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.413There 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 present414to 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 whichhereafter.

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 whatmaybe future, and even to whatmight have beenfuture, 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 happenifthe known conditions which always accompany it take place, and those conditions I can produce when I please. I believe415that 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.

The author goes on to say, that the belief that we should have the sensations if certain conditions were realized, that is, if we had certain other sensations, is merely an inseparable association of the two sets of sensations with one another, and their inseparable union with the idea of ourselves as having them. But I confess it seems to me that all this may exist in a case of simple imagination. The author would himself admit that the complex idea of the object, in all its fulness, may be in the mind without belief. What remains is its association with the idea of ourselves as percipients. But this also, I cannot but think, we may have in the case of an imaginary scene, when we by no means believe that any corresponding reality exists. Does the idea of our own personality never enter into the pictures in our imagination? Are we not ourselves present in the scenes which we conjure up in our minds? I apprehend we are as constantly present in them, and as conscious of our presence, as we are in contemplating a real prospect. In either case the vivacity of the other impressions eclipses, for the most part, the thought of ourselves as spectators, but not more so in the imaginary, than in the real, spectacle.

It appears to me, then, that to account for belief in external416objects, we must postulate Expectation; and since all our expectations, whether positive or contingent, are a consequence of our Memory of the past (as distinguished from a representation in fancy), we must also postulate Memory. The distinction between a mere combination of ideas in thought, and one which recals to us a combination of sensations as actually experienced, always returns on our hands as an ultimate postulate.

The author proceeds to shew how this idea of a mere group of sensations, actual or contingent, becomes knit up with an idea of a permanent Something, lying, as it were, under these sensations, and causing them; this further enlargement of the complex idea taking place through the intimate, or, as he calls it, inseparable association, generated by experience, which makes us unable to imagine any phenomenon as beginning to exist without something anterior to it which causes it. This explanation, seems to me quite correct as far as it goes; but, while it accounts for the difficulty we have in not ascribing our sensations to some cause or other, it does not explain why we accept, as in fact we do, the group itself as the cause. I have endeavoured to clear up this difficulty elsewhere (Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy), and in preference to going over the ground a second time, I subjoin, at the end of the volume, thechaptercontaining the explanation. That chapter supplies all that appears to me to be further necessary on the subject of belief in outward objects; which is thus shewn to be a case of Conditional Expectation.

It is unnecessary to follow the author into the minute consideration of Belief in the existence of objects not present since the explanation already given equally applies to them. My belief in the present existence of St. Paul’s is correctly set forth by the author as consisting of the following elements: I believe that I have seen St. Paul’s: I believe that I shall see St. Paul’s, when I am again in St. Paul’s Churchyard: I believe that I should see St. Paul’s, if I were in St. Paul’s Churchyard at this instant. All this, as he justly remarks, is Memory or Expectation. And this, or some part of this, is417the whole of what is in any case meant by belief in the real existence of an external object. The author adds, I also believe that if any creature whose senses are analogous to my own, is now in St. Paul’s Churchyard, it has the present sensation of that edifice. But this belief is not necessary to my belief in the continued existence of St. Paul’s. For that, it suffices that I believe I should myself see it. My belief that other creatures would do so, is part of my belief in the real existence of other creatures like myself; which is no more mysterious, than our belief in the real existence of any other objects some of whose properties rest not on direct sensation, but on inference.

Belief in past existences, when those existences have been perceived by ourselves, is Memory. When the past existences are inferred from evidence, the belief of them is not Memory, but a fact of the same nature as Expectation; being a belief that weshould have hadthe sensations if we had been cotemporary with the objects, and had been in the local position necessary for receiving sensible impressions from them.

We now come to the case of Belief in testimony. But testimony is not itself an object of belief. The object of belief is what the testimony asserts. And so in the last of the author’s three cases, that of assent to a proposition. The object of belief, in both these cases, is an assertion. But an assertion is something asserted, and what is asserted must be a fact, similar to some of those of which we have already treated. According to the author, belief in an assertion is belief that two names are both of them names of the same thing: but this we have felt ourselves obliged todiscard, as an inadequate explanation of the import of any assertions, except those which are classed as merely verbal. Every assertion concerning Things, whether in concrete or in abstract language, is an assertion that some fact, or group of facts, has been, is, or may be expected to be, found, wherever a certain other fact, or group of facts, is found. Belief in this, is therefore either remembrance that we did have, or expectation that we shall have, or a belief of the same nature with expectation that in418some given circumstances we should have, or should have had, direct perception of a particular fact. Belief, therefore, is always a case either of Memory or of Expectation; including under the latter name conditional as well as positive expectation, and the state of mind similar to expectation which affects us in regard to whatwouldhave been a subject of expectation, if the conditions of its realization had still been possible.

It may be objected, that we may believe in the real existence of things which are not objects of sense at all. We may. But we cannot believe in the real existence of anything which we do not conceive as capable of acting in some way upon our own or some other being’s consciousness; though the state of consciousness it produces may not be called a sensation. The existence of a thing means, to us, merely its capacity of producing an impression of some sort upon some mind, that is, of producing some state of consciousness. The belief, therefore, in its existence, is still a conditional expectation of something which we should, under some supposed circumstances, be capable of feeling.

To resume: Belief, as I conceive, is more than an inseparable association, for inseparable associations do not always generate belief, nor does belief always require, as one of its conditions, an inseparable association: we can believe that to be true which we are capable of conceiving or representing to ourselves as false, and false what we are capable of representing to ourselves as true. The difference between belief and mere imagination, is the difference between recognising something as a reality in nature, and regarding it as a mere thought of our own. This is the difference which presents itself when Memory has to be distinguished from Imagination; and again when Expectation, whether positive or contingent (i.e. whether it be expectation that we shall, or only persuasion that in certain definable circumstances we should, have a certain experience) has to be distinguished from the mere mental conception of that experience.

III.

Let us examine, once more, whether the speculations in the text afford us any means of further analysing this difference.

419The difference presents itself in its most elementary form in the distinction between a sensation and an idea. The authoradmitsthis distinction to be ultimate and primordial. “A sensation is different from an idea, only because it is felt to be different.” But, after having admitted that these two states or consciousness are distinguishable from each other in and by themselves, he adds, that they are also distinguishable by their accompaniments. “The accompaniments of a sensation are always generically different from those of an idea….. The accompaniments of a sensation, are all the simultaneousobjects of sensation, together with all those which, to a certain extent, both preceded and followed it. The accompaniments of an idea are not the simultaneous objects of sensation, butother ideas; namely, the neighbouring facts, antecedent and consequent, of the mental train.” There can be no doubt that in those individual cases in which ideas and sensations might be confounded, namely, when an idea reaches or approaches the vivacity of a sensation, the indication here pointed out helps to assure us that what we are conscious of is, nevertheless, only an idea. When, for instance, we awake from a dream, and open our eyes to the outward world, what makes us so promptly recognise that this and not the other is the real world, is that we find its phenomena connected in the accustomed order of our objects of sensation. But though this circumstance enables us, in particular instances, to refer our impression more instantaneously to one or the other class, it cannot be by this that we distinguish ideas at first from sensations; for the criterion supposes the distinction to be already made. If we judge a sensation to be a sensation because its accompaniments are other sensations, and an idea to be an idea because its accompaniments are other ideas, we must already be able to distinguish those other sensations from those other ideas.

A similar remark is applicable to a criterion between sensations and ideas, incidentally laid down by Mr. Bain in the First Part of his systematic treatise. “A mere picture oridearemains the same whatever be our bodily position or420bodily exertions; the sensation that we call the actual is entirely at the mercy of our movements, shifting in every possible way according to the varieties of action that we go through.” (The Senses and the Intellect, 2nd ed. p. 381.) This test, like the author’s, may serve in cases of momentary doubt; but sensations in general must have been already distinguished from ideas, before we could have hit upon this criterion between them. If we had not already known the difference between a sensation and an idea, we never could have discovered that one of them is “at the mercy of our movements,” and that the other is not.

It being granted that a sensation and an idea areipso factodistinguishable, the author thinks it no more than natural that “the copy of the sensation should be distinguishable from the revival of the idea, when they are both brought up by association.” But he adds, that there is another distinction between the memory of a sensation, and the memory of an idea, and it is this. In all Memory the idea of self forms part of the complex idea; but in the memory of sensation, the self which enters into the remembrance is “the sentient self, that is, seeing and hearing:” in the memory of an idea, it is “not the sentient self, but the conceptive self, self having an idea. But” (he adds) “myself percipient, and myself imagining, or conceiving, are two very different states of consciousness: of course the ideas of these states of consciousness, or these states revived by association, are very different ideas.”

Concerning the fact there is no dispute. Myself percipient, and myself imagining or conceiving, are different states, because perceiving is a different thing from imagining; and being different states, the remembrance of them is, as might be expected, different. But the question is, in what does the difference between the remembrances consist? The author calls one of them theideaof myself perceiving, and the other theideaof myself imagining, and thinks there is no other difference. But how do the idea of myself having a sensation, and the idea of myself having an idea of that sensation, differ from one another? since in either case an idea of the sensation is all421that I am having now. The thought of myself perceiving a thing at a former time, and the thought of myself imagining the thing at that former time, are both at the present moment facts of imagination—are now merely ideas. In each case I have an ideal representation of myself, as conscious in a manner very similar in the two cases; though not exactly the same, since in the one case I remember to have been conscious of a sensation, in the other, to have been conscious only of an idea of that sensation: but, in either case, that past consciousness enters only as an idea, into the consciousness I now have by recollection. In what, then, as far as mere ideas are concerned, do my present mental representations of the two cases differ? Will it be said, that the idea of the sensation is one thing, the idea of the idea of the sensation another thing? Or are they both the same idea, namely, the idea of the sensation; and is the element that is present in the one case, but absent in the other, not an idea but something else? A difference there is admitted to be between the remembrance of having had a sensation, and the remembrance of having merely thought of the sensation, i.e. had the idea of it: is this difference a difference in the ideas I have in the two cases, or is the idea the same, but accompanied in the one case by something not an idea, which does not exist in the other? for if so, this something is a Belief.

I have touched upon this question in a formernote, and expressed my inability to recognise, in the idea of an idea, anything but the idea itself; in the thought of a thought, anything but a repetition of the thought. My thought of Falstaff, as far as I can perceive, is not a copy but a repetition of the thought I had of him when I first read Shakespeare: not indeed an exact repetition, because all complex ideas undergo modification by time, some elements fading away, and new ones being added by reverting to the original sources or by subsequent associations; but my first mental image of Falstaff, and my present one, do not differ as the thought of a rose differs from the sight of one; as an idea of sensation differs from the sensation. On this point the author was perhaps of422the same opinion, since we find him contrasting the “copy” of the sensation with the “revival” of the idea, as if the latter was a case of simple repetition, the former not. It would have been well if he had made this point a subject of express discussion; for if his opinion upon it was what, from this passage, we may suppose it to have been, it involves a serious difficulty. If (he says) a sensation and an idea “are distinguishable in the having, it is likely that the copy of the sensation should be distinguishable from the revival of the idea.” But the copy of the sensation is the idea; so that, on this shewing, the idea is distinguishable from its own revival, that is, from the same idea when it occurs again. The author’s theory would thus require him to maintain that an idea revived is a specifically different idea, and not the same idea repeated: since otherwise the two states of mind, so far as regards the ideas contained in them, are undistinguishable, and it is necessary to admit the presence in Memory of some other element.

Let us put another case. Instead of Falstaff, suppose a real person whom I have seen: for example General Lafayette. My idea of Lafayette is almost wholly, what my idea of Falstaff is entirely, a creation of thought: only a very small portion of it is derived from my brief experience of seeing and conversing with him. But I have a remembrance of having seen Lafayette, and no remembrance of having seen Falstaff, but only of having thought of him. Is it a sufficient explanation of this difference to say, that I have an idea of myself seeing and hearing Lafayette, and only an idea of myself thinking of Falstaff? But I can form a vivid idea of myself seeing and hearing Falstaff. I can without difficulty imagine myself in the field of Shrewsbury, listening to his characteristic soliloquy over the body of Hotspur; or in the tavern in the midst of his associates, hearing his story of his encounter with the men in buckram. When I recal the scene, I can as little detach it from the idea of myself as present, as I can in the case of most things of which I was really an eye-witness. The spontaneous presence of the idea of Myself in the423conception, is always that of myself as percipient. The idea of myself as in a state of mere imagination, only substitutes itself for the other when something reminds me that the scene is merely imaginary.

I cannot help thinking, therefore, that there is in the remembrance of a real fact, as distinguished from that of a thought, an element which does not consist, as the author supposes, in a difference between the mere ideas which are present to the mind in the two cases. This element, howsoever we define it, constitutes Belief, and is the difference between Memory and Imagination. From whatever direction we approach, this difference seems to close our path. When we arrive at it, we seem to have reached, as it were, the central point of our intellectual nature, presupposed and built upon in every attempt we make to explain the more recondite phenomena of our mental being.—Ed.

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“It would afford great light and clearness to the art of Logic, to determine the precise nature and composition of the ideas affixed to those words which have complex ideas;i.e., which excite any combinations of simple ideas, united intimately by association.”—Hartley.Prop.12,Corol.3.

RATIOCINATIONis one of the most complicated of all the mental phenomena. And it is worthy of notice, that more was accomplished towards the analysis of it, at an early period in the history of intellectual improvement, than of any other of the complex cases of human consciousness.

It was fully explained by Aristotle, that the simplest case of Ratiocination consists of three propositions, which he called a syllogism. A piece of ratiocination may consist of one, or more syllogisms, to any extent; but every single step is a syllogism.

A ratiocination, then, or syllogism, is first resolved into three propositions. The following may be taken as one of the simplest of all examples. “All men are animals: kings are men: therefore kings are animals.”

Next, the Proposition is resolved into its proximate elements. These are three; two Terms, one called the Subject, the other the Predicate, and theCopula.425What is the particular nature of each of these elements we have already seen, and here, therefore, need not stay to inquire.

The ancient writers on Logic proceeded in their analysis, no farther than Terms. After this, they only endeavoured to enumerate and classify terms; to enumerate and classify propositions; to enumerate and classify syllogisms; and to give the rules for making correct syllogisms, and detecting incorrect ones. And this, as taught by them, constituted the whole science and art of Logic.

What, under this head, we propose to explain, is—the process of association involved in the syllogism, and in the belief which is part of it.

That part of the process which is involved in the two antecedent propositions, called the premises, has been already explained. It is only, therefore, the third proposition, called the conclusion, which further requires exposition.

We have seen, that in the proposition, “All men are animals,” Belief is merely the recognition that the meaning of the term, “all men,” is included in that of the term “animals,” and that the recognition is a case of association. In the proposition also, “kings are men,” the belief is merely the recognition, that the individuals named “kings,” are part of the many, of whom “men,” is the common name. This has already been more than once explained. And now, therefore, remains only to be shewn what further is involved in the third proposition, or conclusion, “kings are animals.”

In each of the two preceding propositions, two terms or names are compared. In the last426proposition, a third name is compared with both the other two; immediately with the one, and, through that, with the other; the whole, obviously, a complicated case of association.

In the first proposition, “all men are animals,” the term, “all men,” is compared with the term animals; in other words, a certain association, already expounded, takes place. In the second proposition, “kings are men,” the term “kings,” is compared with the term “all men;” comparison here, again, being only a name for a particular case of association. In the third proposition, “kings are animals,” the name “kings,” is compared with the name “animals,” but mediately through the name, “all men.” Thus, “kings,” is associated with “all men,” “all men,” with “animals;” “kings,” therefore, with “animals,” by a complicated, and, at the same time, a rapid, and almost imperceptible process. It would be easy to mark the steps of the association. But this would be tedious, and after so much practice, the reader will be at no loss to set them down for himself.109

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