286 PSYCHOLOGY. 



If tlie words of Mill be taken to apply to the mere sub- 

 jective analysis of belief — to the question, What does it 

 feel like when we have it ? — they must be held, on the whole, 

 to be correct. Belief, the sense of realit}^, feels like itself — 

 that is about as much as we can say. 



Prof. Brentano, in an admirable chapter of his Psycho- 

 logic, expresses this by saying that conception and belief 

 (which he names judgment) are two different fundamental 

 psychic phenomena. What I myself have called (Vol. I, p. 

 275) the * object ' of thought may be comparatively simple, 

 like "Ha! what a pain," or "It-thunders"; or it may be 

 complex, like "Columbus-discovered-America-in-1492," or 

 " There-exists-an-all-wise-Creator-of-the-world." In either 

 case, however, the mere thought of the object may exist as 

 something quite distinct from the belief in its reality. The 

 belief, as Brentano says, presupposes the mere thought : 



" Every object comes into consciousness in a twofold way, as simply 

 thought of [vorgestelU] and as admitted [anerkannt] or denied. The 

 relation is analogous to that which is assumed by most philosophers 

 (by Kant no less than by Aristotle) to obtain between mere thought and 

 desire. Nothing is ever desired without being thought of ; but the 

 desiring is nevertheless a second quite new and peculiar form of rela- 

 tion to the object, a second quite new way of receiving it into 

 consciousness. No more is anything judged [i.e., believed or disbelieved] 

 which is not thought of too. But we must insist that, so soon as the 

 object of a thought becomes the object of an assenting or rejecting 

 judgment, our consciousness steps into an entirely new relation to- 

 wards it. It is then twice present in consciousness, as thought of, and 

 as held for real or denied ; just as when desire awakens for it, it is both 

 thought and simultaneously desired." (P. 266.) 



The commonplace doctrine of ' judgment ' is that it 

 consists in the combination of * ideas ' by a * copula ' into 

 a ' projDosition,' which may be of various sorts, as affir- 

 mative, negative, hypothetical, etc. But who does not see 

 that in a disbelieved or doubted or interrogative or condi- 

 tional proposition, the ideas are combined in the same 

 identical way in which they are in a proposition which is 

 solidly believed ? The loay in ivhich the ideas are combined is 

 a part of the inner constitution of the thought's object or content. 

 That object is sometimes an articulated whole with relations 

 between its parts, amongst which relations, that of predicate 



