| An idea assented to FEELS different from a fictitious idea, that the fancy alone presents to us: And this different feeling I endeavour to explain by calling it a superior force, or vivacity, or solidity, or FIRMNESS, or steadiness. |
| This variety of terms, which may seem so unphilosophical, is intended only to express that act of the mind, which renders realities more present to us than fictions, causes them to weigh more in the thought, and gives them a superior influence on the passions and imagination. |
| Provided we agree about the thing, it is needless to dispute about the terms. |
| The imagination has the command over all its ideas, and can join, and mix, and vary them in all the ways possible. |
| It may conceive objects with all the circumstances of place and time. |
| It may set them, in a, manner, before our eyes in their true colours, just as they might have existed. |
| But as it is impossible, that that faculty can ever, of itself, reach belief, it is evident, that belief consists not in the nature and order of our ideas, but in the manner of their conception, and in their feeling to the mind. |
| T confess, that it is impossible to explain perfectly this feeling or manner of conception. |
| We may make use of words, that express something near it. |
| But its true and proper name is belief, which is a term that every one sufficiently understands in common life. |
| And in philosophy we can go no farther, than assert, that it is something felt by the mind, which distinguishes the ideas of the judgment from the fictions of the imagination. |
| It gives them more force and influence; makes them appear of greater importance; infixes them in the mind; and renders them the governing principles of all our actions. |
| This definition will also be found to be entirely conformable to every one's feeling and experience. |
| Nothing is more evident, than that those ideas, to which we assent, are more strong, firm and vivid, than the loose reveries of a castle-builder. |
| If one person sits down to read a book as a romance, and another as a true history, they plainly receive the same ideas, and in the same order; nor does the incredulity of the one, and the belief of the other hinder them from putting the very same sense upon their author. |
| His words produce the same ideas in both; though his testimony has not the same influence on them. |
| The latter has a more lively conception of all the incidents. |
| He enters deeper into the concerns of the persons: represents to himself their actions, and characters, and friendships, and enmities: He even goes so far as to form a notion of their features, and air, and person. |
| While the former, who gives no credit to the testimony of the author, has a more faint and languid conception of all these particulars; and except on account of the style and ingenuity of the composition, can receive little entertainment from it. |
| SECT. VIII. OF THE CAUSES OF BELIEF. |
| Having thus explained the nature of belief, and shewn that it consists in a lively idea related to a present impression; let us now proceed to examine from what principles it is derived, and what bestows the vivacity on the idea. |