Note ae — Chapter IV
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Our deep-rooted tendency to trust human testimony may yield a very curious example of the difficulties presented by the whole class of pre-rational beliefs. Mr. J. Mill in accordance with his system of foregone Associations "resolves" this case as follows (Analysis I. p. 385-6): "Belief in testimony is but a case of the anticipation of the future from the past; and belief in the uniformity of the laws of nature is but another name for the same thing.... The testimony uniformly calls up the idea of the reality of the event, so closely, that I cannot disjoin them. But the idea, irresistibly forced upon me, of a real event, is Belief."
On this explanation Mr. Bain remarks, "The belief in Testimony is derived from the primary credulity of the mind, in certain instances left intact under the wear and tear of adverse experience. Hardly any fact of the human mind is better attested than the primitive disposition to receive all testimony with unflinching credence. It never occurs to the child to question any statement made to it, until some positive force on the side of scepticism has been developed. Gradually we find that certain testimonies are inconsistent with fact; we have, therefore, to go through a long education in discriminating the good testimonies from the bad. To the one class, we adhere with the primitive force of conviction that in the other class has been shaken and worn away by the shocks of repeated contradictions."
It seems quite possible that our "primary credulity" may be one example of a wider spread feeling of reliance engendered in part by affection and dependence. Its force varies considerably in various minds. Women whose lives have been happy and free from disappointment retain much of this primary intuitive belief to the end of their days. Among men, the trust in Testimony becomes controlled by their power of balancing probabilities; a faculty in which the very credulous and also the very sceptical are often observed to be deficient. The disappointed of both sexes proverbially incline to Scepticism.