BELIEF OR CONVICTION. 35 



and that there is nothing that we can know, or 

 believe, or deny, for which we are not immediately 

 indebted to observation, or of which the foundation 

 may not be traced to something that we have ob- 

 served, however removed it may seem to be from 

 the ordinary exercise of the senses. When we call 

 a man of intelligent mind " a man of sense," we 

 do not therefore speak falsely, or even figuratively. 

 We speak the literal truth, for we mean a man who 

 has used his senses to good purpose a man of ob- 

 servation. 



From want of knowing what led us to make the 

 first observation, and how that observation was made, 

 we are unable directly to school or instruct each 

 other in the process of observing. But after we have 

 observed and profited by it, we can retrace the pro- 

 cess backwards, which is teaching by example the 

 best, and in most instances the only, method of in- 

 struction ! 



The inference the belief, or perhaps rather the 

 conviction according to which we judge or act, is 

 quite a different matter. It is not an immediate ex- 

 ercise of the senses, but an act of the mind some- 

 thing which follows, after the senses have brought 

 in their information ; though, as the mind, having no 

 material substance to move through space, requires 

 no time to act, the act of the mind often follows so 

 close on the process of sensation that we are not 

 able to distinguish between the one and the other. 

 The distinction is, however, a very important one : 

 for the two are different, and very different ; and if 

 we confound them, we understand neither, lose the 

 government of ourselves, remain ignorant, and fall 

 into error in judgment and in conduct. 



But though the act of the mind is different from 

 observation by the senses, that act never takes place 

 unless observation has gone before it; and there 

 cannot be the least exercise of the mind without a 

 reference to observation, either immediate or re- 





