THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 3l9 



idea do not always coalesce ; for often we first suppose and 

 then believe ; first play witli the notion, frame the hypoth- 

 esis, and then affirm the existence, of an object of thought. 

 And we are quite conscious of the succession of the two 

 mental acts. But these cases are none of them primitive 

 cases. They onlj- occur in minds long schooled to doubt 

 by the contradictions of experience. The 'primitive impulse 

 is to a^rm immediately the reality of all that is conceived.'^ 

 When we do doubt, however, in what does the subsequent 

 resolution of the doubt consist? It either consists in a 

 purely verbal performance, the coupling of the adjectives 

 ' real ' or ' outwardly existing ' (as predicates) to the thing 

 originally conceived (as subject) ; or it consists in the per- 

 ception in the given case of that for which these adjectives, ab- 

 stracted from other similar concrete cases, stand. But what 

 these adjectives stand for, we now know well. They stand 

 for certain relations (immediate, or through intermediaries) 

 to ourselves. Whatever concrete objects have hitherto stood 

 in those relations have been for us ' real,' ' outwardly exist- 

 ing.' So that when we now abstractly admit a thing to be 

 * real ' (without perhaps going through any definite percep- 



* ' ' The leading fact iu Belief, according to my view of it, is our Primi- 

 tive Credulitj'. AVe begin by believing everything ; whatever is, is true. 

 . . . The animal born iu the morning of a summer day proceeds upon the 

 fact of da3iight ; assumes the perpetuity of that fact. Whatever it is 

 disposed to do, it does without misgivings. If iu the morning it began a 

 round of operations continuing for hours, under the full benefit of day- 

 light, it would unhesitatingly begin the same round in the evening. Its 

 state of mind is practically one of unbounded confidence ; but, as yet, it 

 does not understand what confidence means. 



' ' The pristine assurance is soon met by checks ; a disagreeable experience 

 leading to new insight. To be thwarted and opposed is one of our earliest 

 and most frequent pains. It develops the sense of a distinction between 

 free and obstructed impulses ; the unconsciousness of an open way is ex- 

 changed for consciousness ; we are now said properly to believe in what 

 has never been contradicted, as we disbelieve in what has been contradicted. 

 We believe that, after the dawn of day, there is before us a continuance 

 of light ; we do not believe that this light is to continue forever. 



" Thus, the vital circumstance in belief is never to be contradicted — never 

 to lose preMige. The number of repetitious counts for little iu the process: 

 we are as much convinced after ten as after fifty ; we are more convinced 

 by ten unbroken than by fifty for and one against." (Bain ; The Emotions 

 and the Will, pp. 511, 512.) 



