CLASS HI. 2. 2 4. OF VOLITION. 351 



of folly? These they have disbelieved and despised, but have 

 ever bowed their hoary heads to Truth and Nature. 



Mankind may be divided in respect to the facility of their be- 

 lief or conviction into two classes; those who are ready to assent 

 to single facts from the evidence of their senses, or from the se- 

 rious assertions of others; and those who require analogy to cor- 

 roborate or authenticate them. 



Our first knowledge is acquired by our senses; but these are 

 liable to deceive us, and we learn to detect these deceptions by 

 comparing the ideas presented to us by one sense with those pre- 

 sented by another. Thus when we first view a cylinder, it ap- 

 pears to the eye as a flat surface with different shades on it, till 

 we correct this idea by the sense of touch, and find its surface to 

 be circular; that is, having some parts gradually receding further 

 from the eye than others. So when a child, or a cat, or a bird, 

 first sees its own image in a looking-glass, it believes that another 

 animal exists before it, and detects this fallacy by going behind 

 the glass to examine if another tangible animal really exists there. 



Another exuberant source of error consists in the false notions 

 which we receive in our early years from the design or ignorance 

 of our instructors, which affect all our future reasoning by their 

 perpetual intrusions; as those habits of muscular actions of the 

 face or limbs, which are called tricks, when contracted in infan- 

 cy, continue to the end of our lives. 



A third great source of error is the vivacity of our ideas of 

 imagination, which perpetually intrude themselves by various 

 associations, and compose the farrago of our dreams; in which, 

 by the suspension of volition, we are precluded from comparing 

 the ideas of one sense with those of another, or the incongruity 

 of their successions with the usual course of nature, and thus to 

 detect their fallacy. Which we do in our waking hours by a per- 

 petual voluntary exertion, a process of the mind above mentioned, 

 which we have termed intuitive analogy. Sect. XVII. 3. 7. 



This analogy presupposes an acquired knowledge of things, 

 hence children and ignorant people are the most credulous, as not 

 possessing much knowledge of the usual course of nature; and 

 secondly, those are most credulous, whose faculty of comparing 

 ideas, or the voluntary exertion of it, is slow or imperfect. Thus 

 if the power of the magnetic needle of turning towards the north, 

 or the shock given by touching both sides of an electrized coated 

 jar, was related for the first time to a philosopher, and to an ig- 

 norant person; the former would be less ready to believe them 

 than the latter; as he would find nothing similar in nature to 

 compare them to, he would again and again repeat the experi- 

 ment, before he would give it his entire credence; till by these 



