Primary Beliefs, 239 



outfit of every man and of every animal in which 

 there is truly voluntary action, seeking relations to 

 the world. Not that we suppose that animals or 

 infants ever enunciate this truth of the existence 

 of an external world to themselves, or have any 

 theories or ideas respecting it, except that the 

 belief is always present, as an element in the im- 

 pulse to every voluntary act seeking an end in the 

 world without the actor. Belief in the uniformity 

 of Nature's laws, that is, that gravitation, or cohe- 

 sion, or a specific kind of matter, under the same 

 conditions, will always produce the same results, wc 

 are inclined, also, to regard as an original gift. 



It may be found that the idea of causality is all 

 that is constant, and that the rest of this belief is 

 partly instinctive and partly inductive, the propor- 

 tion that is instinctive varying according to the im- 

 perative demands of the animal, as we have al- 

 ready seen is the case, in reference to those events 

 in Nature that are contingent, depending upon the 

 condition of the causes necessary to produce them. 

 At least we are compelled to treat all men, and all 

 animals that we desire to make useful to us, as 

 though they had either instinctively, or as an in- 

 duction, a belief both in the existence of an exter- 

 nal world and also in the principle of causality, in 

 all the operations of nature. So much for the con- 

 ditions of all voluntary action from the lowest to 

 the highest. Experience, as a guide, rests upon 

 them and would be useless without them. 



But such conditions of action are not impulses 

 to action ; and these we want. The Appetites we 



