EVIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL CAUSATION. 97 



however general, of the human mind to believe it. Belief is 

 not proof, and does not dispense with the necessity of proof. 

 [ am aware, that to ask for evidence of a proposition which 

 we are supposed to believe instinctively, is to expose oneself 

 to the charge of rejecting the authority of the human facul 

 ties ; which of course no one can consistently do, since the 

 human faculties are all which any one has to judge by: and 

 inasmuch as the meaning of the word evidence is supposed 

 to be, something which when laid before the mind, induces 

 it to believe ; to demand evidence when the belief is ensured 

 by the mind s own laws, is supposed to be appealing to the 

 intellect against the intellect. But this, I apprehend, is a 

 misunderstanding of the nature of evidence. By evidence is 

 not meant anything and everything which produces belief. 

 There are many things which generate belief besides evidence. 

 A mere strong association of ideas often causes a belief so 

 intense as to be unshakeable by experience or argument. 

 Evidence is not that which the mind does or must yield to, 

 but that which it ought to yield to, namely, that, by yielding 

 to which, its belief is kept conformable to fact. There is no 

 appeal from the human faculties generally, but there is an 

 appeal from one human faculty to another ; from the judging 

 faculty, to those which take cognizance of fact, the faculties 

 of sense and consciousness. The legitimacy of this appeal is 

 admitted whenever it is allowed that our judgments ought to 

 be conformable to fact. To say that belief suffices for its 

 own justification is making opinion the test of opinion ; it is 

 denying the existence of any outward standard, the con 

 formity of an opinion to which constitutes its truth. We 

 call one mode of forming opinions right and another wrong, 

 because the one does, and the other does not, tend to make 

 the opinion agree with the fact to make people believe what 

 really is, and expect what really will be. Now a mere dis 

 position to believe, even if supposed instinctive, is no 

 guarantee for the truth of the thing believed. If, indeed, 

 the belief ever amounted to an irresistible necessity, there 

 would then be no use in appealing from it, because there 

 would be no possibility of altering it. But even then the 



VOL. II. 7 



