THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 309 



desired, " A grocer has a full creed as to foreign policy, 

 a young lady a complete theory of the sacraments, as to 

 which neither has any doubt. ... A girl in a country par- 

 sonage will be sure that Paris never can be taken, or that 

 Bismarck is a wretch " — all because they have either con- 

 ceived these tilings at some moment with passion, or asso- 

 ciated them with other things which they have conceived 

 with passion. 



M. Kenouvier calls this belief of a thing for no other 

 reason than that we conceive it with passion, by the name 

 of mental vertigo.'^ Other objects whisper doubt or dis- 

 belief; but the object of passion makes us deaf to all but 

 itself, and we affirm it unhesitatingly. Such objects are the 

 delusions of insanity, which the insane person can at odd 

 moments steady himself against, but which again return to 

 sweep him off his feet. Such are the revelations of mysti- 

 cism. Such, particularly, are the sudden beliefs which ani- 

 mate mobs of men when frenzied impulse to action is 

 involved. Whatever be the action in point — whether the 

 stoning of a prophet, the hailing of a conqueror, the burn- 

 ing of a witch, the baiting of a heretic or Jew, the starting 

 of a forlorn hope, or the flying from a foe — the fact that to 

 believe a certain object will cause that action to explode is a 

 sufficient reason for that belief to come. The motor im- 

 pulse sweeps it unresisting in its train. 



The whole history of witchcraft and early medicine is 

 a commentary on the facility with which anything which 

 chances to be conceived is believed the moment the belief 

 chimes in with an emotional mood. 'The cause of sickness?' 

 When a savage asks the cause of anything he means to ask 

 exclusively * What is to blame ? ' The theoretic curiosity 

 starts from the practical life's demands. Let some one then 

 accuse a necromancer, suggest a cliarm or spell which has 

 been cast, and no more ' evidence ' is asked for. What evi- 

 dence is required beyond this intimate sense of the culprit's 

 responsibility, to which our very viscera and limbs reply ? t 



* Psych ologie Ratiounelle, cli. 12. 

 f Two examples out of a thousaud : 



Reid, Inquiry, ch. ii. t; 9: "I remember, many years ago, a white ox 

 was brought into the country, of so enormous size lliat people came many 



