point of view of knowledge, in a word, our beliefs of what we remember are so many pure assumptions, and if we could only believe what we know to be true or probable, we should have no confidence whatever in memory.
The distinction between the pure intellect seeing and the practical intellect trusting, or between belief and knowledge, is of such fundamental importance for the theory of knowledge, that a further elucidation may not be out of place. Something brings to my mind the thought of a friend, and then I remember that I saw him yesterday. In what does my recollection of having seen him consist? Not, of course, in my imagining him in that set of surroundings which I call a certain place, and at that point in the stream of my conscious experience which I call yesterday; for, if so, there would be no distinction between imagination and memory. To the mere images of imagination, memory—belief of any kind—adds what, with Baldwin, we may call the reality-feeling, plus the "consciousness of the personal indorsement of reality."[1] Belief, in a word, consists in the fact that the ideas or images of imagination—in the case when the belief refers to some matter not present to the senses—are consciously regarded as realities. Now we may have this reality-feeling when we believe that the ideas or images to which it is attached are not realities and that they do not correspond to or represent realities. In other words, we may have one of the elements or constituents of belief—the reality-feeling—without the other—the personal indorsement of the reality; the saying to one's self that the reality-feeling is true. Sitting in a car at a depot, waiting for my train to start, I seem to see the motion of my train when another train moves slowly by. In other words, the reality-feeling attaches itself to the image or idea of my train in motion. But when I look at the wheels of the moving train this reality-feeling ceases to exist so long as I continue to look at them. I see or believe that the apparent motion of my train is due to the real motion of the other. The same kind of reality-feeling attaches itself to a new set of experiences. But as soon as I stop
- ↑ Feeling and Will, p. 158
