Page:Treatise of Human Nature (1888).djvu/668

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A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE.

moral, 300; can there be a right or a wrong taste in beauty? 547 n: involuntary, 608; derived from sympathy, 364; sense of, produced by sympathy with the pleasure of a possessor in his possession: hence we find beauty in every thing useful, 576; but a thing is still beautiful though actually useful to nobody, 584; sentiments of beauty like those of morals arise either immediately from 'the mere species and appearance' or from reflection on the tendency of things to produce happiness, 590.

Belief (v. Scepticism).

§ 1. The vivacity of a Perception, 86; a strong and steady conception of any idea, 97 n, 101, 103, 116, 119; 'vivacity' distinguished from 'clearness,' since there is as clear an idea of the object in disbelief as in belief but in belief the idea is conceived in a different manner, 96; the force or strength of an idea distinguished from the agitation it produces in the mind: hence the difference between poetry and history, 631 (cf. 419); vivacity not the only difference between ideas: ideas really feel different, 636 (cf. 629); vivacity of impression not the test of truth nor the only source of belief, 143, 144; thus philosophical differs from unphilosophical probability. because it corrects vivacity by rejection and general rules, 146 f., 631.

§ 2. Is a lively idea produced by a relation to a present impression, 93, 97, 98, 209, 626, which relation is produced by custom, 102; belief arises only from causation, not from resemblance and contiguity, 107, though assisted by their presence and weakened by their absence, 113.

§ 3. Belief weakened by a long argument. 144: this a remedy of scepticism, 186 (cf. 218), 268; exception in case of history, 146, and morals, owing to their peculiar interest, 455: imperfect belief the direct result of an imperfect habit or the indirect result of a divided perfect habit, 133 f.; belief which attends probability a compounded effect, 137; unphilosophical probability, 146 f.

§ 4. Belief in existence of an object which arises from relation of cause and effect is no new idea attached to the simple conception of the object. 623 (cf. 66 f.); (a) it is not the idea of existence attached to the idea of the object, for we have no abstract idea of existence, 623; (b) it is not an idea at all: if it were, a man could believe what he pleased, since the mind has the command over all its ideas. 624 (cf. 184); belief is 'merely a certain feeling or sentiment' which depends not on the will, and which alone distinguishes fact from fancy. 624, 153; it is more properly an act of the sensitive than of the cogitative part of our natures, 183 (cf. 103), and is not a simple act of thought, 184. But it is not a feeling or impression distinguishable from the conception, for (a) there is no distinct impression which attends every distinct conception of matter of fact, 625; (b) a vivid