The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2 (of 2)

[316] Prof. Royce puts this well in discussing idealism and the reality of an 'external' world. "If the history of popular speculation on these topics could be written, how much of cowardice and shuffling would be found in the behavior of the natural mind before the question, 'How dost thou know of an external reality?' Instead of simply and plainly answering: 'I mean by the external world in the first place something that I accept or demand, that I posit, postulate, actively construct on the basis of sense-data,' the natural man gives us all kinds of vague compromise answers.... Where shall these endless turnings and twistings have an end?... All these lesser motives are appealed to, and the one ultimate motive is neglected. The ultimate motive with the man of every-day life is the will to have an external world. Whatever consciousness contains, reason will persist in spontaneously adding the thought: 'But there shall be something beyond this.'... The popular assurance of an external world is the fixed determination to make one, now and henceforth." (Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 304—the italics are my own.) This immixture of the will appears most flagrantly in the fact that although external matter is doubted commonly enough, minds external to our own are never doubted. We need them too much, are too essentially 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.—Chapters ix and x of Prof. Royce's work are on the whole the clearest account of the psychology of belief with which I am acquainted.

[317] "The leading fact in Belief, according to my view of it, is our Primitive Credulity. We begin by believing everything; whatever is, is true.... The animal born in the morning of a summer day proceeds upon the fact of daylight; assumes the perpetuity of that fact. Whatever it is disposed to do, it does without misgivings. If in the morning it began a round of operations continuing for hours, under the full benefit of daylight, it would unhesitatingly begin the same round in the evening. Its state of mind is practically one of unbounded confidence; but, as yet, it does not understand what confidence means.

"The pristine assurance is soon met by checks; a disagreeable experience leading to new insight. To be thwarted and opposed is one of our earliest and most frequent pains. It develops the sense of a distinction between free and obstructed impulses; the unconsciousness of an open way is exchanged for consciousness; we are now said properly to believe in what has never been contradicted, as we disbelieve in what has been contradicted. We believe that, after the dawn of day, there is before us a continuance of light; we do not believe that this light is to continue forever.

"Thus, the vital circumstance in belief is never to be contradicted—never to lose prestige. The number of repetitions counts for little in the process: we are as much convinced after ten as after fifty; we are more convinced by ten unbroken than by fifty for and one against." (Bain: The Emotions and the Will, pp. 511, 512.)

[318]Literature. D. Hume: Treatise on Human Nature, part iii. §§ vii-x. A. Bain: Emotions and Will, chapter on Belief (also pp. 20 ff.). J. Sully: Sensation and Intuition, essay iv. J. Mill: Analysis of Human Mind, chapter xi. Ch. Renouvier: Psychologie Rationnelle, vol. ii. pt. ii. and Esquisse d'une Classification systématique des Doctrines Philosophiques, part vi. J. H. Newman: The Grammar of Assent. J. Venn: Some Characteristics of Belief. V. Brochard: De l'Erreur, part ii. chap. vi, ix; and Revue Philosophique, xxviii. 1. E. Rabier: Psychologie, chap xxi. Appendix. Ollé Laprune: La Certitude Morale (1881). G. F. Stout: On Genesis of Cognition of Physical Reality, in 'Mind,' Jan. 1890. J. Pikler: The Psychology of the Belief in Objective Existence (London, 1890).—Mill says that we believe present sensations; and makes our belief in all other things a matter of association with these. So far so good; but as he makes no mention of emotional or volitional reaction, Bain rightly charges him with treating belief as a purely intellectual state. For Bain belief is rather an incident of our active life. When a thing is such as to make us act on it, then we believe it, according to Bain. "But how about past things, or remote things, upon which no reaction of ours is possible? And how about belief in things which check action?" says Sully; who considers that we believe a thing only when "the idea of it has an inherent tendency to approximate in character and intensity to a sensation." It is obvious that each of these authors emphasizes a true aspect of the question.

My own account has sought to be more complete, sensation, association, and active reaction all being acknowledged to be concerned. The most compendious possible formula perhaps would be that our belief and attention are the same fact. For the moment, what we attend to is reality; Attention is a motor reaction; and we are so made that sensations force attention from us. On Belief and Conduct see an article by Leslie Stephen, Fortnightly Review, July 1888.

A set of facts have been recently brought to my attention which I hardly know how to treat, so I say a word about them in this foot-note. I refer to a type of experience which has frequently found a place amongst the 'Yes' answers to the 'Census of Hallucinations,' and which is generally described by those who report it as an 'impression of the presence' of someone near them, although no sensation either of sight, hearing, or touch is involved. From the way in which this experience is spoken of by those who have had it, it would appear to be an extremely definite and positive state of mind, coupled with a belief in the reality of its object quite as strong as any direct sensation ever gives. And yet no sensation seems to be connected with it at all. Sometimes the person whose nearness is thus impressed is a known person, dead or living, sometimes an unknown one. His attitude and situation are often very definitely impressed, and so, sometimes (though not by way of hearing), are words which he wishes to say.

The phenomenon would seem to be due to a pure conception becoming saturated with the sort of stinging urgency which ordinarily only sensations bring. But I cannot yet persuade myself that the urgency in question consists in concomitant emotional and motor impulses. The 'impression' may come quite suddenly and depart quickly; it may carry no emotional suggestions, and wake no motor consequences beyond those involved in attending to it. Altogether, the matter is somewhat paradoxical, and no conclusion can be come to until more definite data are obtained.

Perhaps the most curious case of the sort which I have received is the following. The subject of the observation, Mr. P., is an exceptionally intelligent witness, though the words of the narrative are his wife's.

"Mr. P. has all his life been the occasional subject of rather singular delusions or impressions of various kinds. If I had belief in the existence of latent or embryo faculties, other than the five senses, I should explain them on that ground. Being totally blind, his other perceptions are abnormally keen and developed, and given the existence of a rudimentary sixth sense, it would be only natural that this also should be more acute in him than in others. One of the most interesting of his experiences in this line was the frequent apparition of a corpse some years ago, which may be worth the attention of your Committee on that subject. At the time Mr. P. had a music-room in Boston on Beacon Street, where he used to do severe and protracted practice with little interruption. Now, all one season it was a very familiar occurrence with him while in the midst of work to feel a cold draft of air suddenly upon his face, with a prickling sensation at the roots of his hair, when he would turn from the piano, and a figure which he knew to be dead would come sliding under the crack of the door from without, flattening itself to squeeze through and rounding out again to the human form. It was of a middle-aged man, and drew itself along the carpet on hands and knees, but with head thrown back till it reached the sofa, upon which it stretched itself. It remained some moments, but vanished always if Mr. P. spoke or made a decided movement. The most singular point in the occurrence was its frequent repetition.

He might expect it on any day between two and four o'clock, and it came always heralded by the same sudden cold shiver, and was invariably the same figure which went through the same movements. He afterwards traced the whole experience to strong tea. He was in the habit of taking cold tea, which always stimulates him, for lunch, and on giving up this practice he never saw this or any other apparition again. However, even allowing, as is doubtless true, that the event was a delusion of nerves first fatigued by overwork and then excited by this stimulant, there is one point which is still wholly inexplicable and highly interesting to me. Mr. P. has no memory whatever of sight, nor conception of it. It is impossible for him to form any idea of what we mean by light or color, consequently he has no cognizance of any object which does not reach his sense of hearing or of touch, though these are so acute as to give a contrary impression sometimes to other people. When he becomes aware of the presence of a person or an object, by means which seem mysterious to outsiders, he can always trace it naturally and legitimately to slight echoes, perceptible only to his keen ears, or to differences in atmospheric pressure, perceptible only to his acute nerves of touch; but with the apparition described, for the only time in his experience, he was aware of presence, size, and appearance, without the use of either of these mediums.

The figure never produced the least sound nor came within a number of feet of his person, yet he knew that it was a man, that it moved, and in what direction, even that it wore a full beard, which, like the thick curly hair, was partially gray; also that it was dressed in the style of suit known as 'pepper and salt.' These points were all perfectly distinct and invariable each time. If asked how he perceived them, he will answer he cannot tell, he simply knew it, and so strongly and so distinctly that it is impossible to shake his opinion as to the exact details of the man's appearance. It would seem that in this delusion of the senses he really saw, as he has never done in the actual experiences of life, except in the first two years of childhood."

On cross-examining Mr. P., I could not make out that there was anything like visual imagination involved, although he was quite unable to describe in just what terms the false perception was carried on. It seemed to be more like an intensely definite conception than anything else, a conception to which the feeling of present reality was attached, but in no such shape as easily to fall under the heads laid down in my text.