Professor James entitles the chapter devoted to this subject “The
Perception of Reality,” and defines belief to be “the mental state
or function of cognising reality.” He explains that, “As used in the
following pages, ‘Belief’ will mean every degree of assurance, including
the highest possible certainty and conviction” (Vol. II, p. 283).
According to this definition, erroneous beliefs, such, for instance, as
the belief that the earth is flat, stationary, and the centre of the
universe, or the delusion of an insane man that he is Jesus Christ, are
cognitions of reality. Professor James would probably say that they are
realities to the mind entertaining them, and it is true that the feeling
of belief is the same, whether the thing believed be true or false.
I think, however, that it is more customary to use the verb which he
employs in connection with beliefs which agree with the objective facts,
and that the “feeling” or “sense” of reality would be a better term than
“perception” or “cognition.”
This, however, is not, to my mind, the most serious objection to the
definition. Although Professor James does not use the word “knowledge”
in this connection, it seems evident, from the passage quoted above, and
from what he says elsewhere, that he considers all kinds, as well as all
degrees of certainty to be beliefs. It seems to me evident, on the other
hand, that many of our cognitions of reality are not properly called
beliefs. As an instance, I will quote the illustration with which he
opens the discussion of “The Various Orders of Reality” (p. 287).
“Suppose a new-born mind, entirely blank and waiting for
experience to begin. Suppose that it begins in the form of a
visual impression (whether faint or vivid is immaterial) of a
lighted candle against a dark background, and nothing else, so
that whilst this image lasts it constitutes the entire universe
to the mind in question. Suppose, moreover (to simplify the
hypothesis), that the candle is only imaginary, and that no
‘original’ of it is recognised by us psychologists outside.
Will this hallucinatory candle be believed in, will it have a
real existence for the mind?
“What possible sense (for that mind) would a suspicion have
that the candle is not real? What would doubt or disbelief
of it imply? When _we_, the onlooking psychologists, say the
candle is unreal, we mean something quite definite, viz.
that there is a world known to _us_ which _is_ real, and to
which we perceive that the candle does not belong; it belongs
exclusively to that individual mind, has no status anywhere
else, etc. It exists, to be sure, in a fashion, for it forms
the content of that mind’s hallucination; but the hallucination
itself, though unquestionably it is a sort of existing fact,
has no knowledge of _other_ facts; and since those _other_
facts are the realities _par excellence_ for us, and the only
things we believe in, the candle is simply outside of our
reality and belief altogether.
“By the hypothesis, however, the mind which sees the candle
can spin no such considerations as these about it, for of
other facts, actual or possible, it has no inkling whatever.
That candle is its all, its absolute. Its entire faculty of
attention is absorbed by it. It _is_, it is _that_; it is
_there_; no other possible candle, or quality of this candle,
no other possible place, or possible object in the place, no
alternative, in short, suggests itself as even conceivable;
so how can the mind help believing the candle real? The
supposition that it might possibly not do so is, under the
supposed conditions, unintelligible.”
I readily grant that it is, under the supposed circumstances,
unintelligible that the candle should be thought to be unreal, but it
seems to me equally so that it should be believed to be real. What does
Professor James mean by a belief in the reality of the candle under such
conditions? Nothing more than that the mind is conscious of a sensation
which we know, but it does not, is like that produced by the sight of
a candle. This sensation is certainly a reality, and the only possible
reality to that mind. Professor James must, then, be understood as
maintaining that a sensation, pure and simple, is a belief in an object
exciting the sensation. If, for instance, the first consciousness of the
supposed mind were the odor of a rose, or the whistle of a locomotive,
he must admit that the mind would believe in the rose or the locomotive.
If I have a headache, or am hungry or tired, I not only have beliefs
about these sensations, but the headache, the hunger, the weariness, are
themselves beliefs. Now I submit that this is contrary to all ordinary
use of language. It is, perhaps, impossible for an adult, with his mind
full of memories of past experiences, to have a sensation without some
sort of a belief about it, but although the sensation and the belief
may be inseparable, they are not indistinguishable, and, as a matter of
fact, every one does distinguish between his sensations and his beliefs
about them. I do not think it would be quite correct to say even of an
adult who had never seen or heard of a candle, that, on seeing one for
the first time, he would believe in the reality of the candle, although
doubtless he would believe he saw something real—a real flame, for
instance.
If it be admitted that sensations are entitled to be called beliefs,
it seems impossible to stop short of the conclusion that all states of
consciousness are beliefs.
Emotions and volitions are as much realities as sensations, and are known
as such by the mind that experiences them. That memory and imagination
involve belief, is too evident to need discussion. But if this be the
case, the chapter on belief could have been very greatly abbreviated—need
not in fact, contain more than four words. To say that all consciousness
is belief would perhaps simplify matters, but it would not advance our
knowledge very much, nor would it accord with the ordinary use of the
word, which has reference to a particular kind of consciousness, which
every one knows, however hard he may find its definition.
It seems to me, therefore, that Professor James’s definition of belief
is defective in two ways. There are beliefs which are not cognitions
of reality, and there are cognitions of reality which are not beliefs.
Especially in regard to the latter class, I think that the definition
confuses a distinction that is real and important, between different
kinds of knowledge. We know our sensations, emotions and volitions in a
way which differs not only in degree but in kind from any usual, or, I
think, legitimate sense of the word “Belief.”
Perhaps it would be the safer course to rest content with pointing out
the objections to the author’s definition without laying myself open
to retaliation by attempting one of my own, but it does not seem to me
impossible to give one which will include all that is understood by the
term and nothing more. I should say that belief is the sense or feeling
of relation between mental objects. That we have belief whenever we have
this feeling, seems to me too plain to require argument, and I am unable,
after a good deal of reflection, to call to mind any belief that is not
included in the definition. If I see, or imagine that I see a lighted
candle, it may excite in my mind a great variety of beliefs, as, that the
flame is hot, that the light and heat are caused by the chemical union of
oxygen with carbon and hydrogen, that the material of which the candle
is composed is wax, paraffine or tallow, that it has a cotton wick, that
it is of a certain size, weight, and color, and so on indefinitely.
All of these are evidently ideas of relation. To say “flame,” or “hot”
does not express a belief, unless something else is understood, but to
say “flame is hot” does so. If I say that the color red is equal to the
square of the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle, I fail to express
a belief because the mind perceives no relation between the objects, and
the answer to such a statement would be, not that it is or is not true,
but that it has no meaning. The only cases which occur to me in which it
might be plausibly argued that a belief did not involve the feeling of
relation are such impersonal expressions as “it rains,” or, “it is cold.”
The exception, however, is only apparent, arising from the erroneous
idea that everything which is implied in language must be expressed.
When we say, “it rains,” we mean, “rain is falling.” In either form of
language, the thought conveyed is that of the relation of the drops of
water and their motion. The stock-broker, with his prearranged code,
may communicate the ideas of a long sentence in a single word, or the
Freemason may do the same to the initiated by a gesture. In such a case,
it would be absurd to contend that no relation is felt or communicated
because there is no formal subject or predicate.
Whatever may be thought of the sufficiency of my definition, I risk the
assertion that it includes all beliefs that can be affirmed, denied or
doubted. We never question our sensations, emotions or volitions—we
have them, are aware of them, and that is the end of the matter. It is
the relations of our sensations to each other, and to our pleasures
and pains, our choices and rejections, that involve us in all sorts of
perplexities. The whole question of the grounds of belief in general, and
the truth or falsehood of particular beliefs is a question of relations.
It is, then, in the sense indicated above that I shall use the word
hereafter.
Having settled the definition, it may be worth while to consider for
a moment whether this feeling of relation, which can only be known by
experience, is enough like any other mental states to be classed with
them. On this point Professor James says: “_In its inner nature, belief,
or the sense of reality, is a sort of feeling more allied to the emotions
than to anything else._ Mr. Bagehot distinctly calls it the ‘emotion’
of conviction. I just now spoke of it as acquiescence. It resembles
more than anything else what in the psychology of volition we know as
consent. Consent is recognised by all to be a manifestation of our active
nature. It would naturally be described by such terms as ‘willingness’
or the ‘turning of our disposition.’ What characterises both consent
and belief is the cessation of theoretic agitation through the advent
of an idea which is inwardly stable, and fills the mind solidly to the
exclusion of contradictory ideas. When this is the case, motor effects
are apt to follow. Hence the states of consent and belief, characterised
by repose on the purely intellectual side, are both intimately connected
with subsequent practical activity. This inward stability of the mind’s
content is as characteristic of disbelief as of belief. But we shall
presently see that we never disbelieve anything except for the reason
that we believe something else that contradicts the first thing.
Disbelief is thus an incidental complication to belief, and need not be
considered by itself.” (P. 283).
I am unable to satisfy myself whether, in the above passage, Professor
James has in mind the feeling of belief or other feelings which often
accompany it. The “cessation of theoretic agitation,” “willingness,”
“turning of our disposition,” are accompanied by feelings which I should
say are not only like, but identical with emotion. In the case of old,
confirmed beliefs, however, theoretic agitation ceased, and the turning
of the disposition occurred, if at all, long ago, and I am unable to
recognise anything resembling emotion in my belief that two and two make
four, that cows eat grass, that iron is a metal, and many others that
might be mentioned. Nor do these beliefs, at the present time, give rise
to motor effects, which, so far as I am able to see, only result from
such beliefs as are, directly or indirectly, associated with emotion.
If such beliefs as I have mentioned are not purely intellectual, as
distinguished from emotional phenomena, I should be at a loss to know
where the distinction is to be made between “the head” and “the heart.”
The sense of relation seems to me to be the most purely intellectual of
all the mental functions, and, although it may give rise to all sorts of
emotions, the more settled, undisturbed and unquestioning the belief,
the less likely is it to give rise to any but the feeling of calm, which
seems to me to be the antithesis of emotion. I should say that belief is
a feeling _sui generis_, without enough analogy with any other to justify
classing them together.
I have already quoted the illustration with which Professor James opens
the discussion of the subject of Reality. After quoting from Spinoza,
to the same effect, the supposed case of a horse with wings imagined to
be real in the absence of any contradictory thought, he goes on to say:
“The sense that anything we think of is unreal can only come, then, when
that thing is contradicted by some other thing of which we think. _Any
object which remains uncontradicted is ipso facto believed and posited as
absolute reality._” (P. 288). Elsewhere he says:
“... _all propositions, whether attributive or existential, are
believed through the very fact of being conceived, unless they
clash with other propositions believed at the same time, by
affirming that their terms are the same as the terms of those
other propositions._” (P. 290).
This, I think, is stated too strongly, at least, in the latter quotation.
A proposition that is uncontradicted will be believed, but it is not
necessary that the contradictory proposition should be believed in
order that the first may fail of belief. I believe nothing, at present,
contradictory of the proposition that it is now raining in Boston. I
think it not improbable that such may be the case, but at the same time
the contrary proposition is present to my mind, that it may not be
raining in Boston, and the result is the state of mind which Professor
James very properly regards as the opposite of belief—doubt. But
supposing that a proposition is presented to the mind, which, being for
the time uncontradicted, is believed, and that subsequently another,
contrary proposition is presented, is it certain that the latter will
be disbelieved? May not a state of doubt replace belief in this case
also? Or supposing that two propositions, which have been believed
independently, are brought into juxtaposition in such a way as to show
that they are inconsistent, how are we to determine which if either,
shall be believed? Professor James seems to teach that it is a matter of
choice.
“That we can at any moment think of the same thing which
at any former moment we thought of is the ultimate law of
our intellectual constitution. But when we now think of it
incompatibly with our other ways of thinking of it, then we
must choose which way to stand by, for we cannot continue to
think of it in two contradictory ways at once. _The whole
distinction of real and unreal, the whole psychology of
belief, disbelief and doubt, is thus grounded on two mental
facts—first, that we are liable to think differently of the
same; and second, that when we have done so, we can choose
which way of thinking to adhere to and which to disregard._[63]
The subjects adhered to become real subjects, the attributes
adhered to real attributes, the existence adhered to real
existence; while the subjects disregarded become imaginary
subjects, the attributes disregarded erroneous attributes, and
the existence disregarded an existence in no man’s land, in the
limbo ‘where footless fancies dwell.’” (P. 290).
The doctrine that belief is, in the last analysis, a matter of choice
is a prominent feature of Professor James’s teaching, to which I shall
have occasion to refer again. It seems to me to involve him in some
inconsistencies. For the present, it should be noted that he admits the
reality of every mental object in its proper relations.
“If I merely dream of a horse with wings, my horse interferes
with nothing else and has not to be contradicted. That horse,
its wings, and its place are all equally real. That horse
exists no otherwise than as winged, and is moreover really
there, for that place exists no otherwise than as the place
of that horse, and claims as yet no connection with the other
places of the world. But if with this horse I make an inroad
into the _world otherwise known_, and say, for example, ‘That
is my old mare Maggie, having grown a pair of wings where
she stands in her stall,’ the whole case is altered; for now
the horse and place are identified with a horse and place
otherwise known, and _what_ is known of the latter objects is
incompatible with what is perceived of the former. ‘Maggie
in her stall with wings! Never!’ The wings are unreal, then,
visionary. I have dreamed a lie about Maggie in her stall.” (P.
289).
Here, the dream is a reality, and the winged horse is as really a part of
it as the mare Maggie is of the outside world. The reality of the winged
horse in the one case, and his unreality in the other, depend on his
relations to other mental objects. So, for instance, if any one should
say that a mermaid was a creature with the portion of a man from the
waist up united to the body and limbs of a horse, I should be justified
in contradicting him, and saying that it was not a mermaid but a centaur
that he had in mind. It would not be a valid answer to say that there
were really no such things as mermaids and centaurs. In mythology, a
centaur has as definite a structure as a giraffe has in zoölogy, and
it is as inexcusable to confound the one as the other with anything
else. This point is amplified by the author in a section on “The Many
Worlds,” in which the various objects of thought are found in their
proper relations, and out of which each one selects a world of practical
realities, according to his dominant habits of attention. _In the
relative sense_, in which we contrast reality with unreality, or consider
one object more real than another,
“_Reality means simply relation to our emotional and active
life_ ... in this sense, whatever excites and stimulates our
interest is real.” (P. 295).
“_Whatever things have intimate and continuous connection with
my life are things of whose reality I cannot doubt._” (P. 298).
This power of exciting and stimulating our interest, Professor James
finds to be possessed in a pre-eminent degree by sensations, which thus
become, directly or indirectly, our tests of reality, and among which
those which are pleasurable or painful hold the first rank. Next to them,
if not of equal power, are emotions.
“The greatest proof that a man is _sui compos_ is his ability
to suspend belief in the presence of an emotionally exciting
idea. To give this power is the highest result of education.
In untutored minds the power does not exist. Every exciting
thought in the natural man carries credence with it. To
conceive with passion is _eo ipso_ to affirm.” (P. 308).
Professor James’s account of the grounds of belief seems to me inadequate
in that it fails to show the connection between our sensations and
emotions and other mental states and our beliefs. Why is it that the
sight of the heavenly bodies, for instance, awakens in different minds
such diverse beliefs as the Ptolemaic and the Copernican systems of
astronomy? What does a man who is frightened believe? What belief would
necessarily result from a colic? It is not enough to say that sensations
and emotions are connected with belief; we want to know how they are
connected.
Bearing in mind the definition of belief as the sense of relation between
objects, the question resolves itself into the origin of feelings of
relation. As relations are of various kinds, they may be suggested to the
mind by different circumstances. They may, I think, be divided into three
classes:
1) Relations of likeness and unlikeness. These result from the
comparison and discrimination of objects. All the beliefs involved
in the recognition and classification of objects arise in this way.
When, on seeing a certain object, I say that it is a bay horse, and
will weigh about eleven hundred pounds, I give expression to relations
of comparison. The comparison may be immediate, between objects
simultaneously present to the senses, or alike present only to memory
or imagination, or between a present object and a remembered one, or
mediate, by comparison of two or more objects with some other. All
mathematical truths are of this kind.
2) Relations of cause and effect, of substance and quality, of whole and
component parts, of order in time and space, are due to association.
When I say of the horse that his movements are caused by muscular
contractions, that he is of a gentle disposition, that he has a bony
skeleton and red blood, that he is five years old and is harnessed
to a carriage, I express relations of association. In his chapter on
Association Professor James says:
“_Belief_ in anything _not_ present to sense is the very
lively, strong, and steadfast association of the image of that
thing with some present sensation, so that as long as the
sensation persists the image cannot be excluded from the mind.”
(Vol. I, p. 598).
I do not think it is a fact that the image of the thing believed in need
be associated with any present sensation. I am not aware, for instance,
that there is, at present, any such association in my belief in the
existence of the city of Constantinople, or that Queen Victoria is
reigning in England. The associations in these and similar cases are with
objects of memory and not with present sensations. On the other hand,
what we mean by belief in a present object always involves memory of the
past. When we say that we believe in anything, we either mean that it is
like other things of the same sort of which we have had experience, or
that it stands in some other relation to them. Complete loss of memory
would not only destroy all our past beliefs, but, if it were permanent,
would prevent our ever forming any new ones. The universe, in such a
case, would be a mere chaos of sensations.
In order that things may be associated, they must first be discriminated,
otherwise, as Professor James has shown, in his chapter on Discrimination
and Comparison, they are thought of, not as associated things, but as
one thing. In like manner, when discriminated things have once been
associated, the tendency is, in the absence of contrary experience, to
think of them as belonging together. A child, attracted by the brightness
of the teapot, touches it and burns his fingers. He naturally expects the
teapot to be hot the next time he sees it. He is told that his Christmas
gifts were brought down the chimney by Santa Claus. Until the statement
is contradicted, he believes it. Why should he not? Or the association
of things in the mind may come about without any external suggestion.
I remember that the first time that I ever heard a person snore, the
thought came into my mind that the strange noise was made by a bear, and
I lay awake most of the night, in fear of being devoured. The tendency
is to think of things as related in the way in which they are first
presented to the mind, until they come up in some different relation.
This seems to be the explanation of the tendency to “believe as much as
we can,” to “affirm immediately the reality of all that is conceived,”
of which Professor James speaks. With increased experience, we find that
there is a difference in the uniformity of associations, and accordingly
the coincidence of two or more things is associated with the doubt
whether or not the association is a constant one.
3) In addition to the relations considered above, there are some which,
although expressed in terms of association and comparison, seem to me to
have a different origin. That the whole is greater than any of its parts
is a relation of comparison; that a thing cannot be in two different
places at the same time, that every event has a cause, that there is
an external world, are relations of association. Although they do not
arise independently of experience, they contain more than is given in
experience, and the uniformity and firmness with which they are believed
can, it seems to me, only be accounted for by the assumption of an innate
propensity to look upon things as related in these ways.
So far as I am able to judge, beliefs always arise in one or another
of these three ways. But a still more interesting question, from the
practical point of view, than that of the origin of beliefs, is that of
the comparative validity of the various grounds of belief. Are they all
of equal worth, and if not, is there any way of determining which are to
be given the preference, or is belief, like taste, a matter about which
“_non disputandum_”?
Professor James does not go very deeply into the discussion of this
question. As we have seen, he assigns to sensation the greatest efficacy
in producing belief, and discusses the comparative power of various
sorts of sensations in this respect. Emotion he makes a close second.
But the question which gives us the more reliable information, in cases
in which they conflict, he does not discuss at all. As a matter of fact,
there is no doubt that a man under the influence of strong emotion often
draws different conclusions from the evidence of his senses from those
at which he would arrive in its absence. Is he warranted in doing so?
Would any degree of personal interest warrant a man in believing or
disbelieving the doctrine of transubstantiation, the Newtonian theory of
gravitation, the Mosaic or the Darwinian view of the origin of species?
There is no doubt that belief on such subjects as these is influenced by
our interest, real or supposed, in one or the other view, and perhaps
Professor James would say that he deals with the working of minds as they
are, not as we imagine that they ought to be, but the general knowledge
that a class of considerations is reliable or the reverse is another
thing that not only ought to, but actually does affect our beliefs, and
the question of the method to be pursued in ascertaining the actual
relations of things, of forming true beliefs instead of false ones, is
one which hardly ought to be ignored in a discussion of the subject.
Referring to the three classes of relations already considered, it is, I
think, evident that there are differences in the way in which they affect
our belief. In comparison, the essential thing is the accuracy of the
observation. One who has once fully comprehended the proof that the sum
of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles, is as sure of
it as he could be after any amount of experience. In comparing sensible
objects, we may, it is true, and our belief confirmed by repetition, but
this is only in case that we doubt whether the comparison was rightly
made in the first place. That red does not look like blue, nor sweet
taste like sour, we are as certain on one trial as a hundred. If we
apply a foot measure to an object eight inches long, nothing can add
to our certainty that they are not of the same length. In matters of
association, on the other hand, a great deal depends on the uniformity of
the association—the number of times that we have experienced it without
contrary experience. When I hear a crow, for instance, I believe that it
is black, because all the crows that I have ever seen have been so. A
sheep I assume to be white, but with a less degree of confidence, because
black sheep are more numerous than white crows. In the case of a horse,
I have no belief in regard to the color within a certain range, unless
I have some means of knowing about the particular animal in question.
If I were told that my friend had bought a horse, I should have no idea
whether it was bay, or black, or white, or some mixture of these colors.
If, however, I were told that the natural color of my friend’s horse
was green, I should be much more confident that the statement was false
than if the same person should tell me he had seen a white crow, for,
the same reason that I should more readily believe in a black sheep than
in the latter. In the customary use of the word, I might say I _knew_
it was not so. In the case of intuitive judgments experience has little
or nothing to do with the strength of belief. The adult man is no more
firmly convinced of the existence of something external to himself than
the child, and, although he may come to doubt it on speculative grounds,
he no more fails than the child to show by his actions that he has a
practical faith in it.
In many, if not most of our beliefs, all of these elements are present.
If I see an orange, for instance, I have the intuition of externality,
the comparison with other oranges that I have already seen, and
associations of internal structure, taste, smell, and the like. All of
these, and very possibly some emotion, as, for instance, a desire to eat
it, may arise, simultaneously or so nearly so as not to be distinguished
in time, as parts of a single mental state.
There is one kind of association, of importance enough to deserve
mention, of which Professor James makes no mention. The beliefs, or
alleged beliefs of other people have an influence on our minds which
is, I think, not inferior to that of emotion. The man who can, without
misgiving, maintain an opinion which contradicts all that he learned
in childhood and all that is held by those whose good opinion he most
values is, I fancy, quite as rare as he who can suspend judgment in the
presence of an emotionally exciting idea. Most of us take our religious,
political, scientific, and practical beliefs at second hand, from the
friends with whom we associate or the books and papers we read. Take a
young man out of his home and put him, for instance, in college, and it
will probably work a change in his moral standards, not necessarily for
the better. At home, if he knew of a theft, or an assault, he would very
probably be ready to bring the offender to justice, but if the offender
is his classmate, and the sufferer a member of the succeeding class, he
will very probably think it a more shameful thing to report the wrong
than to do it. At the same time, he doubtless considers it utterly
reprehensible that ignorant Italian peasants should feel in the same way
about betraying their neighbors who are guilty of robbery or murder.
Coming now to the influence of emotion on belief, it will not, I presume,
be disputed that it comes about by way of association. Professor James,
as we have seen, holds that “every emotionally exciting thought, in
the natural man, carries credence with it.” I suspect that this is true
only in the sense that, in the absence of experience, not only every
exciting thought, but every thought is believed. However this may be,
in respect to the natural man, I think it is pretty certain that, in
the case of such artificial beings as those who reflect on the causes
of their emotions and beliefs, it will be found that in order for an
idea to excite our emotions, a certain degree of belief is necessary.
Professor James illustrates his position by the fact that a man can
walk along a curbstone without any apprehension of falling, because
the thought of falling awakens no emotion of dread, while on the edge
of a precipice the emotion caused by the thought of the consequences
of a mis-step may quite overcome his belief in his ability to keep his
balance. But a chamois-hunter or an acrobat will pass along the same
place without the slightest apprehension, not because he does not think
of what would happen if he should fall, nor because he has more liking
than any one else for being dashed to pieces, but because he has what the
inexperienced man lacks, entire confidence in his ability to avoid the
danger.
Since I began writing the last paragraph, a number of thoughts have
passed through my mind, any one of which would be sufficiently exciting
if I believed in them, as, that I may die within the next half hour;
that I may fall heir to a fortune, and the like, none of which have
produced any emotional disturbance, because I do not believe that there
is any probability of their being true. Why was it that not only the
medical profession but the public in general became so much interested,
recently, in the announcement that Dr. Koch had discovered a substance
that promised to be a cure for tuberculosis? Partly on account of the
interests involved, but at least equally because his reputation was such
as to inspire confidence in what he said. There are plenty of medicines
advertised in the newspapers for which greater claims are made than
Dr. Koch made for his discovery, which fail to arouse any such general
interest. These examples are probably enough for illustration of the
familiar fact that belief is the most common cause of emotion, and that a
thought that is not believed is apt to leave us unmoved.
Nevertheless, it is a notorious fact that emotion has a great deal to do
with determining the sort and degree of evidence which is satisfactory
to us. Love and hate, respect and contempt, affect our beliefs in regard
to the character of their objects in matters entirely independent of the
qualities which originally inspired the feelings. We find it an easy
matter to believe that a man whose religious or political opinions we
think pernicious is a bad man in matters which have nothing to do with
his opinions, and may find it almost incredible that one whom we like
personally should think differently from ourselves on matters in which we
are deeply interested. But what particular evil we shall believe of the
person whom we dislike, or good of the one whom we like, depends entirely
on circumstances. A man, for instance takes a dislike to a stranger
on account of some lack of good manners. Whether he shall suspect him
of being a clergyman or an infidel, a drinker or a prohibitionist, a
Sunday-school teacher or a gambler, or both, is likely to depend very
largely on his own tastes and principles in regard to such matters.
So, on the other hand, his views in regard to religion, temperance and
gambling, are probably due in great measure to the practice of the
people whom he likes. A woman who has been brought up with a horror of
drunkenness hears that a man with whom she is violently in love is a
drinker. She will probably disbelieve it at first, but if she becomes
convinced of the truth of the report, she will very likely come to think
that a drunkard need not be such a bad fellow after all. If there is any
one thing that more affects our beliefs than what the people we like say,
it is what they do.
In like manner, emotional states without any definite object, such as
we call moods if they are transient, and disposition or temperament if
they are habitual, color our belief, not by originating any definite
propositions, but by making us receptive to those that tend to confirm
them. It is not when a man is broken in spirit by repeated calamities
that he is most ready to believe that “where there’s a will there’s a
way,” nor in the flush of youth, health and triumph that the doctrine
that “all is vanity,” comes home to his heart. In whatever way such
states of mind come about, whether as a result of original constitution,
or of experience, or of disease, they make the mind inhospitable to
whatever does not harmonise with them. In the case of insanity, this
disposition may outweigh the plainest evidence of the senses, so that
a man may believe that he is rolling in wealth and luxury when he is
destitute of the ordinary comforts of life, or that his wife and children
are dead when they are present before his eyes. In a lower degree, most
of us probably have experience of something of the sort in “fits of the
blues,” but while the general character of the belief may be decided
by the emotional tone of the mind, its precise form is determined by
the man’s interests. Low spirits would not be likely, for instance, to
effect a man’s opinion as to the probable course of the stock market,
unless he were in some way interested in stocks, and the view favored by
his emotional condition would depend on the side of the market on which
his interest lay. Beliefs which, in our ordinary state of mind, are not
associated with any strong feeling, such as mathematical truths and the
physical and chemical laws of matter, remain unaffected in all kinds and
degrees of emotional disturbance.
It seems clear, then, that, as a matter of fact, emotions affect our
beliefs through association. It is not difficult to see how this comes
about. Emotions tend to perpetuate themselves. A man who is in high
spirits will laugh at vexations which, if he were in an irritable frame
of mind would seem intolerable. We allow liberties to our friends which
would offend us in persons to whom we are indifferent. The same inertia
of the mind which is shown in these cases offers a resistance to any
thought that tends to disturb it. If I like a man and hate dishonesty,
evidence that the man is dishonest calls up at the same time two contrary
emotional states, which cannot subsist together. One of three things must
happen; either the association of the feeling of liking with the person
of the man, or of that of repugnance with dishonesty, or of the quality
of dishonesty with the man must be given up, or at least impaired. But
the feeling of affection for my friend and that of hatred for the alleged
fault are old established associations, while that of dishonesty with
his personality is a new one, which, in order to find lodgement, must
expel the original inhabitant. Although I may have formed no definite
association of honesty with him, the difficulty is of precisely the same
sort as if I had. In either case it is the breaking up of an habitual
association.
Such being the way in which emotion affects belief, its value as a
ground of belief must be determined in the same way as in other cases
of association. If any emotion is so exclusively connected with some
definite object that the one is never present without the other, we are
warranted in inferring the existence of the object from the presence of
the emotion, as Robinson Crusoe inferred from the human footprints on the
sand that men had been there. As a matter of fact, there is comparatively
little uniformity in associations of this kind. The same things affect
different persons differently, and the same persons differently at
different times. Our hopes and fears are sometimes realised and
sometimes disappointed, and people to whom, on slight acquaintance, we
feel attracted, often develop qualities of a different kind from what
we expected as we come to know them better. If I am fond of money, and
also of idleness, or of friendship, and also of having my own way at all
times, it does not follow that taking my ease is the way to get rich, nor
that always insisting on my own way is the course to make friends. The
most, I think, that can be said in favor of emotion as a ground of belief
is, that its existence presupposes the existence of some object adapted
to excite it. Avarice may be said, in a sense, to prove the existence of
wealth—if there were no wealth there would doubtless be no avarice—but
not that a particular avaricious man will be wealthy. Fear implies the
existence of harm, but not necessarily that harm is coming upon the
one that fears. These are matters in which we can apply the test of
experience to our beliefs, and it seems evident that emotion adds nothing
to our knowledge. We know the things independently of the emotions they
excite, and every one recognises that to expect a thing merely because we
either desire or fear it is, in matters which we can test by experience,
utterly fallacious.
But there are matters lying outside the range of our experience in regard
to which it is often confidently asserted that our desires and fears are
sufficient proof of their reality—a view in which I cannot agree. If it
could be shown that we long for something of an entirely different kind
from anything we have known, that might perhaps be an argument in favor
of its existence, but such is not the case. The wish for immortality,
for instance, is nothing more than the wish for life. Probably there
are but few who would not rather have immortality without death than
after it, but experience has at last convinced the most hopeful that
this is not to be expected, and the search for fountains of youth and
elixirs of life has few devotees. We want life, and we have life; we want
happiness, and we know happiness, whether we ourselves have it or not,
but to say that the fact that we want more than we get of both is a
reason for supposing that we shall ever have all that we want of either
is to reason in a way which we should all see to be fallacious if applied
to things of every-day life. I conclude, then, that the emotions which
a belief excites are utterly valueless as a test of its truth, and that
we may expect that, both with individuals and the race, emotion will
play a smaller and smaller part in belief as true knowledge and culture
increase. This is not saying that, in cases of doubt, it is unreasonable
to hope that things may turn out as we wish.
As to innate beliefs, it is enough to say that we cannot altogether rid
our minds of them, and that they answer perfectly the purpose of working
hypotheses. A man may question the reality of an external world to his
heart’s content, but if he runs his head against a wall, or drops a brick
on his toe, it will hurt him just as much as the most thorough-going
materialist. The consequence is that such a doubt does not affect our
conduct. Abstractly, these beliefs do not all impress us with the same
degree of certainty. That the same thing cannot be in two different
places at once, is, I think, felt to be more absolutely and necessarily
true than that there is such a necessity in the order of events as is
implied in the idea of causation, but for all practical purposes we are
as sure of the one as of the other.
I have already quoted Professor James’s assertion of our ability to
choose which among different ways of thinking of the same we shall
adhere to and which disregard. Perhaps the most prominent feature of his
teaching on the subject of belief is that it is an active, not a passive
state of the mind—a choice, not a necessity. One or two more quotations
on this point will make this plain.
“As bare logical thinkers, without emotional reaction, we give
reality to whatever objects we think of, for they are really
phenomena, or objects of our passing thought, if nothing
more. But, _as thinkers with emotional reaction, we give what
seems to us a higher degree of reality to whatever things we
select and emphasise and turn to WITH A WILL_. These are our
_living_ realities, and not only these, but all things that are
intimately connected with these (p. 297).
“Now the important thing to notice is that the difference
between the objects of belief and will 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, espouses it, says ‘it shall be my
reality.’ It turns to it, in short, in the interested emotional
way” (p. 320).
Although the doctrine is stated, in these and other passages, without
qualification, it is hard to reconcile it with some other statements. He
devotes a chapter to “Necessary Truths,” and says:
“We _must_ attach the predicate ‘equal’ to the subject
‘opposite sides of a parallelogram’ if we think those terms
together at all” (p. 617).
I do not know that it makes much difference whether we say that, in a
case like this, we cannot think differently of the same, or that, having
thought so, we cannot choose which way of thinking to adhere to and which
to disregard. The proposition that a horse is a vertebrate animal cannot
be called a necessary, _a priori_ truth, but I find it as impossible to
think of a horse that is not a vertebrate animal as of a parallelogram
with the opposite sides unequal. A figure with the opposite sides unequal
would not be a parallelogram, and anything that was not animal and
vertebrate would not be a horse. Whether the difficulty in the two cases
is the same or not, it is clear that, by Professor James’s admission,
here is a restriction of our choice as to what we will believe.
Again, he speaks of pleasurable and painful sensations as
“belief-compelling.” Compulsion, so far as it exists, excludes choice,
and if this expression is justified it implies another limitation on the
freedom of belief.
With regard to painful sensations, it seems to me that the fact is that
they, and their associations, force themselves on our attention, rather
than that we “select, and emphasise and turn to them with a will.” If I
have a toothache, I may believe that if I retain the tooth it will keep
me in pain for a long time, and if I have it extracted, that will also
be a painful process. It does not seem to me that the expressions quoted
above accurately describe my state of mind in regard to either of these
beliefs.
According to Professor James, when a man becomes convinced that he is
financially bankrupt, or that he has lost his good name, or that he
is suffering from an incurable and fatal disease, it is because he
“espouses” this view of the matter, “consents to its existence,” says
“it shall be my reality.” This notwithstanding that such a belief may
drive him to determine that, so far as in him lies, all existence, all
reality shall cease; to consent to death and espouse the grave. Would
not the criminal who hears his death-sentence pronounced prefer, if he
could, to disbelieve his eyes and ears, and to feel that it was all a bad
dream? So far as I can judge with regard to many unwelcome beliefs, they
are not like the highwayman who offers the alternative of “your money or
your life,” but like him who throws you down, binds and robs you without
offering any choice.
Perhaps the most striking example of the view under consideration is
found in a foot-note on p. 318, in which, after quoting, with approval, a
statement of Royce that “The ultimate motive with men of every-day life
is the will to have an external world,” he goes on to say:
“This immixture of the will appears most flagrantly in the fact
that although external matter is doubted often enough, minds
external to our own are never doubted. We need them too much,
are too intensely social to dispense with them. Semblances
of matter may suffice to react upon, but not semblances of
communing souls. A psychic solipsism is too hideous a mockery
of our wants, and, so far as I know, has never been seriously
entertained.”
Leaving aside the question whether any one who really disbelieved that
there was any reality, outside of his own mind, in objects of sense,
could believe in the existence of that which he only infers from the
conduct of those objects, it seems to be distinctly stated that the
reason of these beliefs is, not that we cannot help believing so, but
that we choose to believe so, and not otherwise, and that we are able,
having so chosen, to believe as we wish. That there may be no doubt as to
the sense in which the term “Will” is used, I will quote the explanation
with which he opens his chapter on that subject:
“We desire to feel, to have, to do, all sorts of things which
at the moment are not felt, had, or done. If with the desire
there goes a sense that attainment is not possible, we simply
_wish_; but if we believe that the end is in our power, we
_will_ that the desired feeling, having or doing shall be real;
and real it presently becomes, either immediately upon the
willing or after certain preliminaries have been fulfilled” (p.
486).
Now each one must judge for himself whether this, or anything like this
is the way in which he came to believe in an external world. Judging from
my own experience, I should say that the reason we originally have such
a belief is that it arises spontaneously in our minds, and that, for a
long time, it never occurs to us that it can be otherwise. However that
may be, I am certain that when the contrary possibility was presented
to my mind, it struck me as strange, rather than dreadful, and that I
firmly believe many things that seem to me far more hideous than the
doctrine that I am the universe. So far as society is concerned, if I
can _be_ Shakespeare and Milton and Goethe, Plato and Bacon, Newton and
Darwin, Luther and Columbus and Washington, as well as all the people
of my acquaintance, it strikes me that I can be pretty good company for
myself. To use the universality of the belief as a proof of its voluntary
nature seems to me very much such an argument as to say that because all
bodies attract each other in the ratio of their mass and inversely as the
square of the distance, the falling of a stone must be a purely voluntary
matter. I do not see what stronger argument, in a case like this, could
be made for the necessity of a belief than the alleged fact that no one,
under any circumstances, is free from it.
Now, if we substitute the term “Propensity” for “Will” in the passage
quoted above, it would seem to me an entirely accurate description of
the facts, and I can only understand how the authors quoted could take
the ground they do except on the assumption that all propensities, or
at least all which prevail, are choices or volitions. That such is not
the case seems to me clear enough in regard to belief from some of
the instances which I have already mentioned, but it will perhaps be
still more evident from cases in which belief is not in question. The
propensity to remember and constantly think of painful and distressing
things, which we would gladly banish from our thoughts, or such things as
silly rhymes and trifling tunes; to tremble and lose our presence of mind
in danger, when we have most need of the full use of all our faculties;
to express our emotions by muscular movements when we wish to conceal
them, and many others that might be mentioned, are examples of the fact
that an invincible propensity may be quite the reverse of a choice.
That belief is an activity of the mind may be freely admitted. The
mind—whatever the substratum of our states of consciousness may be—is
not a receptacle, to hold indifferently whatever may be poured into
it nor a sheet of blank paper, on which this or that may be written
by circumstances; it has a character of its own, and reacts to its
environment. What the reaction shall be depends both on the character of
the mind and what is presented to it, but it seems incorrect to assume
that all the dispositions of the mind are of the nature of desires or
aversions. In the last analysis of which we are capable, our character
is probably due to our physical constitution, original and acquired, and
our beliefs may be profoundly affected by a few glasses of whiskey or an
attack of fever. Whether the reactions of the matter of which our brains
are formed are as invariable as those of inorganic matter need not be
discussed here; the present point is that while belief is a sense of the
relations of things as they are, the essence of will is the desire to
have them otherwise than as they are. To make belief a matter of choice
is the same as to say that I may at the same time choose that things
shall be as they are and otherwise.
Professor James closes the chapter with a practical observation:
“If belief consists in an emotional reaction of the entire man
on an object, how _can_ we believe at will? We cannot control
our emotions. Truly enough, a man cannot believe at will
abruptly. Nature sometimes, and indeed not very infrequently,
produces instantaneous conversions for us. She suddenly puts
us in an active connection with objects to which she had till
then left us cold. ‘I realise for the first time,’ we then say,
‘what that means!’ This happens often with moral propositions.
We have often heard them; but now they shoot into our lives;
they move us; we feel their living force. Such instantaneous
beliefs are truly enough not to be achieved by will. But
_gradually_ our will can lead us to the same results by a very
simple method; _we need only in cold blood act as if the thing
in question were real, and keep acting as if it were real, and
it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with
our life that it will become real_. It will become so knit with
habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which
characterise belief. Those to whom God and Duty are now mere
names can make them much more than that, if they make a little
sacrifice to them every day. But all this is so well known in
moral and religious education that I need say no more” (p. 321).
The above passage seems to me to illustrate at the same time the force
of Professor James’s rhetoric and an occasional tendency on his part to
be carried away by it into statements that are altogether too sweeping.
In an immense proportion of cases, the method that he recommends is
precisely the surest way to convince ourselves that the thing in question
is _not_ real. It is the method which the small boy takes to convince
himself that the gun is not loaded; the drunkard and spendthrift to
satisfy themselves that their vices will not bring them into poverty and
disgrace. A man may sit all day at the fork of the road, and believe that
the broad way does not lead to destruction, but when he puts his belief
in practice he discovers the truth. So far as practical matters, capable
of being brought to the test of experience, are concerned, it can only be
said that _if they are real_, we shall convince ourselves that such is
the case by acting as if they were real. Doubtless Professor James had
not such prosaic things as these in mind when he wrote the passage, but
a method that will not serve us in regard to such questions as whether
water will wet us or fire burn us, can hardly be called infallible. But
even in regard to questions that must always remain matters of opinion
it is not true in the unqualified sense in which Professor James puts
it. Probably many men, brought up in the belief that it was their duty
to observe the first day of the week by religious worship because the
Hebrews were required to abstain from labor on the seventh day, have come
to modify their belief without any material change in their practice,
and even the belief in regard to the nature and attributes of God may be
affected in advance of a change in the conduct based upon it.
The law of association in this regard is subject to the same limitations
as we have already found to hold in respect to other matters.
Associations of action with belief have a tendency to strengthen it, but,
as in the case of emotion, they may be overcome by other considerations,
and it is entirely possible for a man to go on for the better part of
a lifetime in punctilious conformity to usages which in his heart he
despises, and break out in open rebellion at last. From the ethical
point of view, the advice which seems to be implied, of deliberately
choosing a way of setting doubts at rest which is as efficacious on the
side of error as of truth, of vice as of virtue, seems to me, to say the
least, of doubtful tendency. We must often act in doubtful cases, and
take the risk, amongst others, of thus confirming ourselves in error,
but certainly there can be no more solemn motive for weighing well our
beliefs before committing ourselves to them by action than the fact that
we may, by habit, pervert our moral sense, blind our judgment and stifle
our conscience.
To the man who believes that there is a universe, of which he forms an
infinitesimal part, and that all his interests depend on his attitude
toward the power that works in it, it is of infinitely more interest to
know how he can know the truth than how he can convince himself of this
or that. Shall truth be our master, to be followed and obeyed, though he
command us to give up all else that we hold dear, or our servant, to be
employed as suits our passion or caprice, and dismissed when he will no
longer serve our purpose?
This is perhaps the most momentous question that we are called on to
decide. The man who makes the wrong choice may or may not attain what he
seeks, but though he gain the whole world, he will lose his own soul.