PHILOSOPHY, MENTAL. 
sitions, if, as we go along, every step is be- 
lieved to be true, and every connection of 
one step with another appears to be a just 
one, the feeling of belief is successively 
transferred from one step to another, till at 
last we come to the result, the proposition 
s'hich we wisli to prove, and the feeling 
"ill bp connected wdth this, and will remain 
'"'ith it, when all the steps by which its 
tiuth vvas shew'ii, are entirely lost from the 
view ot the mind. Every one admits this ; 
and every one who has gone through the 
piocess knows it to be so. — There are al- 
most innumerable instances in which we 
nd the feeling of belief connected with 
Ideas, without our being able at once to 
say, or even to say at all, how we acquired 
le connection. In this instance some phi- 
losophers refer to certain instinctive princi- 
ples, by which we are necessarily led to be- 
leve, without any further reason than that 
our mental constitution compels it. But 
vve need not resort to such hypotheses ; 
they do great injury, by checking the re- 
searches of the intellect, and in some cases, 
by leading people to suppose opinions well 
founded, which have no further ground than 
an almost accidental, or, at at any rate, un- 
just transfer of' belief, by means of what 
was itself, perhaps, intitled to. no belief. — 
There are certain results of reflection and 
observation, which we call experience ; and 
it is generally \yise to trust to them. But 
before a man yields to his experience, in 
opposition to the clear evidence of others, 
or to well-founded and well-connected rea- 
sonings, he should consider what experience 
is, and on what ground he has connected 
belief wnth it. He will find that belief is 
not a necessary attendant upon his expe- 
lience, but that it has been connected with 
it by means of intermediate links, which 
might themselves have no satisfactory claim 
to belief. For instance, if a man has not 
observed accurately, or has not a correct 
judgment, his experience may not be worth 
any thing, nor intitled to any belief. Now, 
in many cases, it is almost impossible to re- 
call the intermediate links, in order to 
prove to ourselves the correctness of our 
experience, and yet we must act upon it; 
this shews the importance of cultivating in 
early life those habits of cool judgment and 
accurate observation, which shall give us a 
full right to believe, and to act upon our 
belief, in the results of reflection and obser- 
vation ; but some truths, it may be thought, 
have a necessary connection with belief. 
We admit that there are truths which are 
so accordant with alt the grounds of belief, 
that they instantaneously excite the belief 
of those who have had the opiiortimity of 
knovving those grounds, but no further. 
You immediately believe, that, 2 x 2=4; 
and you would think that man destitute of 
common sense who denied it, or who did 
not immediately admit it. Yet we are 
well convinced, that the belief is formed in 
consequence of a number of external im- 
pressions; or, to state it more familiarly, 
by frequently counting, in the early jiart of 
childhood. We perhaps have not the power 
of discovering the exact steps by which we 
have ourselves proceeded to the belief of 
this truth ; but we can observe them in 
some good measure in otliers, and we can 
trace them in ourselves, in similar circum- 
stances. Often belief in such truths is form- 
ed through the medium of parental autho- 
rity, or that of instructors, and it is proba- 
ble, that in many instances cliildren know 
no more why 12 X 12=144, than that 
they find it so in their multiplication tables; 
but where it has been formed by trials of 
the truth, those trials are forgotten, and the 
truth alone is remembered. — ATe should 
gladly enlarge more on these points, but 
what has been already said will probably 
answer the two purposes which we have irr 
view, to show the operation of association 
in transferring belief; and in leading to the 
inference, that belief ought not to be re- 
garded as a proof of truth ; and yet, that 
the being unable to point out ail the 
grounds of belief, is not any reason why 
that belief should be given up. 
42. Two opposite opinions have long 
been entertained, and are stilt often ad- 
vanced, respecting the disinterestedness of 
the human mind ; some have maintained, 
that tlie mind, in all its feelings and prompt- 
ings to actions, is actuated by selfish mo- 
tives ; that, in fact, there is no action or 
feeling whicli can be called disinterested, 
Others have with more success maintained, 
that the mind can be, and often is, disinter- 
ested ; that a person frequently performs 
an action tending to the good of others, in a 
greater or le.ss degree, without the remotest 
reference to himself, with no other motive 
than a desire to do the good which is the 
effect of the action. The degrading system 
of the former is seldom adopted, but by 
speculative men, who have been led by cir- 
cumstances, happily not universal, to see 
merely the dark side of human nature, and 
to form a more gloomy picture of its self- 
ishness than truth would allow; or by 
