Note ad — Chapter IV
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The word Belief has been used in a variety of senses by modern writers of differing views from Jacobi to Sir. W. Hamilton, from Dr. Newman to Mr. Herbert Spencer.
"This word," Mr. Spencer says, "is habitually applied to dicta of consciousness for which no proof can be assigned: both those which are unprovable because they underlie all proof, and those which are unprovable because of the absence of evidence." And again; "we commonly say we 'believe' a thing for which we can assign some preponderating evidence, or concerning which we have received some indefinable impression.... And it is the peculiarity of these beliefs, as contrasted with cognitions, that their connexions with antecedent states of consciousness may be easily severed, instead of being difficult to sever. But unhappily, the word 'belief' is also applied to each of those temporarily or permanently indissoluble connexions in consciousness, for the acceptance of which the only warrant is that it cannot be got rid of.... Thus the two opposite poles of knowledge go under the same name; and by the reverse connotations of this name, as used for the most coherent and least coherent relations of thought, profound misconceptions have been generated."
Mr. Spencer made these remarks at separate intervals of time, and has repeated them in 1874 (Essays, III. 259-60). It would therefore appear that he thinks little has recently been done to discriminate the significations of so ambiguous a term.
This chapter endeavours to investigate a small number of the genus "Beliefs" to which the differentia "Of Reason" has been added by way of distinction. It also attempts to offer a contribution towards the useful work of explaining their specific validity, and if its argument be correct, they constitute a very important definable species of the Genus, carrying with them a persuasion pre-eminently their own.
On his page 260, last referred to, Mr. Spencer remarks,—"that the belief which the moral and religious feelings are said to yield of a personal God, is not one of the beliefs which are unprovable because they underlie all proof"—and adds that works on Natural Theology treat that Belief as inferential.
The view taken of this moral and religious belief in the present Essay, is that it is in its own nature both primary and inferential. The former of these aspects is the one now under discussion.