154 



HABIT AND INTELLIGENCE. 



[CHAF. 



ceptions, 

 but not for 

 beliefs. 



Belief in 

 the con- 

 stancy of 

 the order 

 of things. 



How is 



this 

 acquired ? 



Some say 

 by habit 

 only. 



I think 

 this is no 

 explana- 

 tion. 



for our heliefs. In other words : — The laws of association 

 will account for the origin of our thoughts, considered 

 merely as thoughts ; but not for the belief that a thought 

 corresponds to an external reality.-^ 



One of the most important of all our beliefs is the belief 

 in the constancy of the course of external things ; or, as it 

 is usually expressed, the belief in the uniformity of nature. 

 We instinctively believe that fire will always be hot, ice 

 always cold, and food always nourishing ; or, to use general 

 terms instead of instances, we believe that the same or 

 similar tilings will continue to ha\'e the same properties, 

 and the same or similar causes will continue to have the 

 same effects. All reasoning from known things to un- 

 known is based on this expectation ; not only reasoning 

 from the past to the future, but all reasoning from known 

 things to unknown, whether the imknown things are 

 future, as when we endeavour to foresee the weather : pre- 

 sent, as when we reason concerning the internal constitu- 

 tion of the earth ; or past, as in geological questions. The 

 axiom implied in all these three cases alike is, that the 

 order of nature has been, is, and will be constant ; there is 

 no doubt this axiom is implied, and there is no doubt that 

 it is true ; the question is, how we acquire our belief 

 in it.^ 



The most obvious answer to this question, and one 

 which has moreover satisfied many philosophers, is that 

 this belief is a mere consequence of experience, producing 

 mental habit. We have always found the order of things 

 constant, and we therefore expect to find it so.^ 



I do not wish to speak dogmatically on so controverted 

 a point, but this appears to me no explanation at all ; or, 

 what comes to the same thing, it is an explanation which 



1 See Note A at the end of this chapter. 



- See Note B at the end of this chapter. 



3 Experience is what produces mental habit. Consequently, the theory 

 referred to in the text is sometimes called the experience theory, some- 

 times the association theory, or, as I prefer to call it, the mental habit 

 theory. The expressions are practically synonymous ; for experience and 

 habit are only the opposite sides of the same fact ; experience being the 

 external or objective side, and habit the internal or subjective. 



I 



