[3] It may be as well here to point out the inconsistency in Hume’s use of ‘belief.’ At the end of sec. 5 (Part III.) the term is extended to ‘impressions of the senses and memory.’ We are said to believe when ‘we feel an immediate impression of the senses, or a repetition of that impression in the memory. But in the following section the characteristic of belief is placed in the derived liveliness of an idea as distinct from the immediate liveliness of impression.
[4] Pp. 407 & 409. [Book I, part III., sec. IX.]
Reality of remembered ‘system’ transferred to ‘system of judgment’.
327. This reconsideration arises out of an objection to his doctrine which Hume anticipates, to the effect that since, according to it, belief is a lively idea associated ‘to a present impression,’ any suggestion of an idea by a resembling or contiguous impression should constitute belief. How is it then that ‘belief arises only from causation’? His answer, which must be quoted at length, is as follows:—‘’Tis evident that whatever is present to the memory, striking upon the mind with a vivacity which resembles an immediate impression, must become of considerable moment in all the operations of the mind and must easily distinguish itself above the mere fictions of the imagination. Of these impressions or ideas of the memory we form a kind of system, comprehending whatever we remember to have been present either to our internal perception or senses, and every particular of that system, joined to the present impressions, we are pleased to call a reality. But the mind stops not here. For finding that with this system of perceptions there is another connected by custom or, if you will, by the relation of cause and effect, it proceeds to the consideration of their ideas; and as it feels that ’tis in a manner necessarily determined to view these particular ideas, and that the custom or relation by which it is determined admits not of the least change, it forms them into a new system, which it likewise dignifies with the title of realities. The first of these systems is the object of the memory and senses; the second of the judgment. ’Tis this latter principle which peoples the world, and brings us acquainted which such existences as, by their removal in time and place, lie beyond the reach of the senses and memory’. [1]
[1] P. 408. [Book I, part III., sec. IX.]
Reality of the former ‘system’ other than vivacity of impressions.
328. From this it appears that ‘what we are pleased to call reality’ belongs, not merely to a ‘present impression,’ but to ‘every particular of a system joined to the present impression’ and ‘comprehending whatever we remember to have been present either to our internal perception or senses.’ This admission already amounts to an abandonment of the doctrine that reality consists in liveliness of feeling. It cannot be that every particular of the system comprehending all remembered facts, which is joined with the present impression, can have the vivacity of that impression either along with it or by successive communication. We can only feel one thing at a time, and by the time the vivacity had spread far from the present impression along the particulars of the system, it must have declined from that indefinite degree which marks an impression of sense. It is not, then, the derivation of vivacity from the present impression, to which it is joined, that renders the ‘remembered system’ real; and what other vivacity can it be? It may be said indeed that each particular of the system had once the required vivacity, was once a present impression; but if in ceasing to be so, it did not cease to be real—if, on the contrary, it could not become a ‘particular of the system,’ counted real, without becoming other than the ‘perishing existence’ which an impression is—it is clear that there is a reality which lively feeling does not constitute and which involves the ‘fiction’ of an existence continued in the absence, not only of lively feeling, but of all feelings whatsoever. So soon, in short, as reality is ascribed to a system, which cannot be an ‘impression’ and of which consequently there cannot be an ‘idea,’ the first principle of Hume’s speculation is abandoned. The truth is implicitly recognized that the reality of an individual object consists in that system of its relations which only exists for a conceiving, as distinct from a feeling, subject, even as the unreal has no meaning except as a confused or inadequate conception of such relations; and that thus the ‘present impression’ is neither real nor unreal in itself, but may be equally one or the other according as the relations, under which it is conceived by the subject of it, correspond to those by which it is determined for a perfect intelligence. [1]
[1] See above, paragraphs 184 & 183.
It is constituted by relations, which are not impressions at all; and in this lies explanation of the inference from it to ‘system of judgment’.
329. A clear recognition of this truth can alone explain the nature of belief as a result of inference from the known to the unknown, which is, at the same time, inference to a matter of fact. The popular notion, of course, is that certain facts are given by feeling without inference and then other facts inferred from them. But what is ‘fact’ taken to mean? If a feeling, then an inferred fact is a contradiction, for it is an unfelt feeling. If (as should be the case) it is taken to mean the relation of a feeling to something, then it already involves inference—the interpretation of the feeling by means of the conception of a universal, self or world, brought to it—an inference which is all inference in posse, for it implies that a universe of relations is there, which I must know if I would know the full reality of the individual object: so that no fact can be even partially known without compelling an inference to the unknown, nor can there be any inference to the unknown without modification of what already purports to be known. Hume, trying to carry out the equivalence of fact and feeling, and having clearer sight than his masters, finds himself in the presence of this difficulty about inference. Unless the inferred object is other than one of sense (outer or inner) or of memory, there is no reasoning, but only perception; [1] but if it is other, how can it be real or even an object of consciousness at all, since consciousness is only of impressions, stronger or fainter? The only consistent way out of the difficulty, as we have seen, is to explain inference as the expectation of the recurrence of a feeling felt before, through which the unknown becomes known merely in the sense that from the repetition of the recurrence the expectation has come to amount to the fullest assurance. But according to this explanation the difference between the inferences of the savage and those of the man of science will lie, not in the objects inferred, but in the strength of the expectation that constitutes the inference. Meanwhile, if a semblance of explanation has been given for the inference from cause to effect, that from effect to cause remains quite in the dark. How can there be inference from a given feeling to that felt immediately before it?