320 PSYCHOLOGY. 



tion of its relations), it is as if we said " it belongs in the 

 same world with those other objects." Naturally enough, 

 we have hourly opportunities for this summary process of 

 belief. All remote objects in space or time are believed in 

 this way. When I believe that some prehistoric savage 

 chipped this flint, for example, the reality of the savage and 

 of his act makes no direct appeal either to my sensation, 

 emotion, or volition. What I mean by my belief in it is 

 simply my dim sense of a continuity between the long dead 

 savage and his doings and the j^reseut world of which the 

 flint forms j^art. It is pre-eminently a case for applying 

 our doctrine of the ' fringe ' (see Vol I. p. 258). When I think 

 the savage with one fringe of relationship, I believe in him ; 

 Avhen I think him without that fringe, or with another one 

 (as, e.g., if I should class him with * scientific vagaries ' in 

 general), I disbelieve him. The word ' real ' itself is, in 

 short, a fringe. 



RELATIONS OP BELIEF AND 'WILL. 



We shall see in Chapter XXV that will consists in 

 nothing but a manner of attending to certain objects, or 

 consenting to their stable presence before the mind. The 

 objects, in the case of will, are those whose existence 

 depends on our thought, movements of our own body for 

 example, or facts which such movements executed in future 

 may make real. Objects of belief, on the contrary, are those 

 which do not change according as we think regarding them. 

 I wiU to get up early to-morrow morning ; I believe that I 

 got up late yesterday morning ; I will that my foreign 

 bookseller in Boston shall i:)rocure me a German book and 

 write to him to that effect. I believe that he will make me 

 pay three dollars for it when it comes, etc. Now the im- 

 portant thing to notice is that this difference between the 

 objects of will and belief is entirely immaterial, as far as 

 the relation of the mind to them goes. All that the mind 

 does is in both cases the same ; it looks at the object and 

 consents to its existence, esjoouses it, says ' it shall be my 

 reality.' It turns to it, in short, in the interested active 

 emotional way. The rest is done by nature, which in some 

 cases makes the objects real which we think of in this 



