CHAPTER XXI.* 



THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 



BELIEF. 



Everyone knows tlie difference between imagining a 

 thing and believing in its existence, between supposing a. 

 proposition and acquiescing in its truth. In the case of 

 acquiescence or belief, the object is not only apprehended 

 by the mind, but is held to have reality. Belief is thus the 

 mental state or function of cognizing reality. As used in 

 the following pages, 'Belief will mean every degree of as- 

 surance, including the highest possible certainty and con- 

 viction. 



There are, as we know, two ways of studying every 

 psychic state. First, the way of analysis: What does it 

 consist in ? What is its inner nature ? Of what sort of 

 mind-stuff is it composed ? Second, the way of history : 

 What are its conditions of production, and its connection 

 with other facts ? 



Into the first way we cannot go very far. In its inner 

 nature, belief, or the sense of reality, is a sort of feeling more 

 allied to the emotions than to anything else. Mr. Bagehot dis- 

 tinctly calls it the ' emotion ' of conviction. I just now 

 spoke of it as acquiescence. It resembles more than any- 

 thing what in the psychology of volition we know as con- 

 sent. Consent is recognized by all to be a manifestation 

 of our active nature. It would naturally be described by 

 such terms as ' willingness ' or the ' turning of our dispo- 

 sition.' What characterizes both consent and belief is the 

 cessation of theoretic agitation, through the advent of an 

 idea which is inwardly stable, and fills the mind solidly to 

 the exclusion of contradictory ideas. When this is the 

 case, motor efi'ects are apt to follow. Hence the states of 



* Reprinted, with additions, from ' Mind' for July 1889. 



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