benefits, or hatred, when we meet with injuries. All these operations are a species of-natural inflincts, which no reasoning or process of the thought and understanding is able, either to produce, or to prevent.

Ar this point, it would be very allowable for us to ftop our philofophical refearches. In most queftions, we can never make a single step farther; and in all queftions, we must terminate here at laft, after our most restless and curious enquiries. But ftill our curiofity will be pardonable, perhaps commendable, if it carry us on to fill farther researches, and make us examine more accurately the nature of this belief, and of the customary conjunction, whence it is derived. By this means we may meet fome explications and analogies, that will give fatisfaction; at least to fuch as love the abstract fciences, and can be entertained with fpeculations, which, however accurate, may ftill retain a degree of doubt and uncertainty. As to readers of a different tafte; the remaining part of this fection is not calculated for them, and the following enquiries may well be understood, tho' it be neglected.

PART II.

THERE is nothing more free than the imagination. of man; and tho' it cannot exceed that original stock of ideas, which is furnished by the internal and external

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ternal fenfes, it has unlimited power of mixing, compounding, feparating, and dividing these ideas, to all the varieties of fiction and vision. It can feign a train of events, with all the appearance of reality, afcribe to them a particular time and place, conceive them as exiftent, and paint them out to itself with every circumftance, that belongs to any hiftorical fact, which it believes with the greatest certainty. Wherein, therefore, confifts the difference between fuch a fiction and belief? It lies not merely in any peculiar idea, which is annexed to fuch a conception, as commands our affent, and which is wanting to every known fiction. For as the mind has authority over all its ideas, it could voluntarily annex this particular idea to any fiction, and confequently be able to believe whatever it pleases; contrary to what we find by daily experience. We can, in our conception, join the head of a man to the body of a horse; but it is not in our power to believe, that fuch an animal has ever really existed.

Ir follows, therefore, that the difference between fiction and belief lies in fome fentiment or feeling, which is annexed to the latter, not to the former, and which depends not on the will, nor can be comImanded at pleasure. It must be excited by nature, like all other fentiments; and must arise from the particular fituation, in which the mind is placed at any particular juncture. Whenever any object is pre

fented

fented to the memory or fenfes, it immediately, by the force of cuftom, carries the imagination to conceive that object, which is ufually conjoined to it; and this conception is attended with a feeling or fentiment, different from the loose reveries of the fancy. In this confists the whole nature of belief. For as there is no matter of fact which we believe so firmly, that we cannot conceive the contrary, there would be no difference between the conception affented to, and that which is rejected, were it not for fome fentiment, which diftinguishes the one from the other. If I fee a billiard-ball moving towards another, on a fmooth table, I can eafily conceive it to ftop upon contact. This conception implies no contradiction; but fill it feels very differently from that conception, by which I represent to myself the impulfe, and the communication of motion from one ball to another.

WERE we to attempt a definition of this fentiment, we fhould, perhaps, find it a very difficult, if not an impoffible task; in the fame manner as if we should endeavour to define the feeling of cold or paffion of anger, to a creature who never had an experience of these fentiments. BELIEF is the true and proper name of this feeling; and no one is ever at a loss to know the meaning of that term; because every man is every moment confcious of the sentiment, reprefented by it. It may not, however, be improper to attempt a description of this fentiment; in hopes we

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may,

may, by that means, arrive at fome analogies, which may afford a more perfect explication of it. I fay then, that belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, fteady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain. This variety of terms, which may feem fo unphilofophical, is intended only to exprefs that act of the mind, which renders realities, or what is taken for fuch, more prefent to us than fictions, caufes them to weigh more in the thought, and gives them a superior influence on the paffions and imagination. Provided we agree about the thing, 'tis 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 poffible. It may conceive fictitious objects with all the circumstances of place and time. It may fet them, in a manner, before our eyes, in their true colors, just as they might have existed. But as it is impoffible, that that faculty of imagination can ever, of itself, reach belief, 'tis evident, that belief confifts not in the peculiar nature or order of ideas, but in the manner of their conception, and in their feeling to the mind. I confefs, that 'tis impoffible perfectly to explain this feeling or manner of conception. We may make ufe of words, which exprefs fomething near it. But its true and proper name, as we observed before, is belief; which is a term, that every one fufficiently understands in common life. And in philofophy, we can go no farther

than

than affert, that belief is fomething felt by the mind, which diftinguishes the ideas of the judgment from the fictions of the imagination. It gives them more force and influence; makes them appear of greater importance; inforces them in the mind; and renders them the governing principle of all our actions. I hear at prefent, for instance, a perfon's voice, with whom I am acquainted; and the found comes as from the next room. This impreffion of my fenfes immediately conveys my thought to the perfon, together with all the furrounding objects. I paint them out to myself as exifting at prefent, with the fame qualities and relations, of which I formerly knew them poffeft. These ideas take fafter hold of my mind, than ideas of an inchanted caftle. They are very different to the feeling, and have a much greater influence of every kind, either to give pleasure or pain, joy or for

row.

LET us, then, take in the whole compafs of this doctrine, and allow, that the fentiment of belief is nothing but a conception of an object more intense and steady than what attends the mere fictions of the imagination, and that this manner of conception arifes from a customary conjunction of the object with fomething prefent to the memory or fenfes: I believe that it will not be difficult, upon thefe fuppofitions, to find other operations of the mind analogous to it, E 5

and