158 



HABIT AND IXTELLIGEKCE. 



[chap. 



causation 

 is self- 

 evident. 



This confi- 

 dence is 

 presup- 

 posed La 

 action, 

 and iu 

 desire and 

 fear. 



manifest any germ of conscious intelligence ; being implied 

 in their universal expectation that what has been foimcl 

 true in the past will continue to be found true in the 

 future. 



From all this I conclude, that our instinctive confidence 

 in the constancy of the order of things is not due to habit, 

 but is an ultimate fact, belonging to mental intelligence. 

 If this is so, it follows that in every determination to 

 action there is an element which is not a result of habit ; 

 for all actions whatever, and all feelings that have reference 

 to action, such as desire and fear, presuppose the belief in 

 the constancy of the order of things. The desire of a 

 hungry man or animal for food, and the proverbial dread of 

 a burned child for the fire, presuppose the belief that food 

 wiU continue to satisfy hunger, and that fire will continue 

 to burn ; and such belief, as I have stated my reasons for 

 thinking, belongs to intellicfpnce. 



Tlie only 

 principles 

 whicli 

 enter into 

 all reason- 

 ing are 

 those of 

 loi^ic. 



The principle of confidence in the order of nature, how- 

 ever, does not enter into all our thoughts ; it does not, for 

 instance, so far as I can see, enter into mathematical rea- 

 soning. The only principles which, so far as I see, enter 

 into all reasoning without any exception whatever, are 

 those of logic ; and when I speak of reasoning, I include 

 not only abstract reasoning, but simple inference, including 

 perception, which, as I have argued in the chapter on that 

 subject, is an inference. In all reasoning whatever, the 

 elementary axiom of logic is assumed ; namely, the axiom 

 that a contradiction cannot be true ; or what is called, in 

 the technical language of logic, the principle of identity 

 and contradiction. All beings that are capable of inferring 

 and of perceiving know that this is true, though they may 

 be unable to express it ; there is no question either of the 

 universality of the beUef or of its truth; but how has it 

 been acquired ? I have argued that mental habit or expe- 

 rience cannot alone and of itself produce belief in the 

 constancy of the order of natiu-e, or any belief at all ; and 

 if my reasoning is vaKd for the belief in the constancy of 

 the order of things, it is equally valid for the belief in the 



