THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 303 



existence. This phenomenon clearly proves that a present impression, 

 with a relation of causation, may enliven any idea, and consequently 

 produce belief or assent, according to the precedent definition of it. . . . 

 It has been remarked among the Mahometans as well as Christians 

 that those pilgrims who have seen Mecca or the Holy Land are ever 

 after more faithful and zealous believers than those who have not had 

 that advantage. A man whose memory presents him with a lively 

 image of the Red Sea and the Desert and Jerusalem and Galilee can 

 never doubt of any miraculous events which are related either by Moses 

 or the Evangelists. The lively idea of the places passes by an easy 

 transition to the facts which are supposed to have been related to them 

 by contiguity, and increases the belief by increasing the vivacity of the 

 conception. The remembrance of those fields and rivers has the same 

 influence as a new argument. . . . The ceremonies of the Catholic 

 religion may be considered as instances of the same nature. The 

 devotees of that strange superstition usually plead in excuse for the 

 mummeries with which they are upbraided that they feel the good effect 

 of external motions and postures and actions in enlivening their 

 devotion and quickening their fervor, which otherwise would decay, 

 if directed entirely to distant and immaterial objects. "We shadow out 

 the objects of our faith, say they, in sensible types and images, and 

 render them more present to us by the immediate presence of these 

 types than it is possible for us to do merely by an intellectual view and 

 contemplation." * 



Hume's cases are rather trivial ; and the things which 

 associated sensible objects make us believe in are supposed 

 by him to be unreal. But all the more manifest for that is 

 the fact of their psychological influence. Who does not 

 'realize' more the fact of a dead or distant friend's 

 existence, at the moment when a portrait, letter, garment 

 or other material reminder of him is found ? The whole 

 notion of him then grows pungent and speaks to us and 

 shakes us, in a manner unknown at other times. In chil- 

 dren's minds, fancies and realities live side by side. But 

 however lively their fancies may be, they still gain lielp 

 from association with reality. The imaginative child 

 identifies its dramatis personce with some doll or other 

 material object, and this evidently solidifies belief, little as 

 it may resemble what it is held to stand for. A thing not 

 too interesting by its own real qualities generally does the 

 best service here. The most useful doll I ever saw was a 

 large cucumber in the hands of a little Amazonian-Indian 



* Treatise of Human Nature, bk. i. pt. iii. sec. 7. 



