There is not a more decisive instance of the identity of Belief and Association, than the dread of ghosts, felt in the dark, by persons who possess, in its greatest strength, the habitual disbelief of their existence. That dread implies belief, and an uncontrollable belief, we need not stay to prove. When the persons of whom we speak feel the dread of ghosts in the dark, the meaning is, that the idea of ghost is irresistibly called up by the sensation of darkness. There is here, indisputably, a case of indissoluble association; nor can it be shewn that there is anything else. In the dark, when this strong association is produced, there 373 is the belief; not in the dark, when the association is not produced, there is no belief.[105]
[105] The efficacy of association is not correctly explained in this instance. The influence of Terror on belief is unquestionably great; but the operation is more complicated than the description given of it in the text. Terror, in the first place, is a depressing passion, and as such impairs the tone of mind suited to the anticipation of coming good, or in the obverse, increases the tendency to anticipate coming evil. In the next place, it is the state most liable to a morbid fixed idea of evil, calamity, or danger. Thirdly, we have learned in the course of our lives to expect numerous possible calamities; and are maintained in serenity only by seeing clearly a good way before us, so as to be sure that none of these possible evils are approaching. Darkness extinguishes for the time our assuring fore-sight, and thus, by removing a counteractive, leaves us a prey to all the demons of mischief. Fourthly, the emotion of Terror has its corresponding imaginations, into which are taken up with avidity all the suggestions of danger that have ever been made to us, including ghosts, hobgoblins, and other agents of calamity, when we have not natural vigour or express training to set them at nought.
The mere fact communicated to us, on a few occasions, that ghosts appear in the dark, and sometimes perform dreadful deeds, would not by force of association alone produce all that un-nerving effect which children and weak or superstitious persons are liable to when, at night, exposed in a lonely place, or passing a churchyard.—B.
Few men, except those who are accustomed to it, could walk on the ridge of a high house without falling down. Yet the same men could walk with perfect security, on similar footing, placed on the ground. What is the interpretation of this contrariety? Fear, we are told, is that which makes the 374 inexperienced person fall. But fear implies belief. There is nothing, however, in the case, but the intense association of the idea of his falling, with his sight of the position in which he is placed. In some persons this idea is so easily excited, that they cannot look down from even a very moderate height, without feeling giddy, as they call it; that is, without having the apprehension; in other words, the belief, of falling.[11*]
[11*] The same account, in substance, of some of the last of these phenomena, is given by Dr. Brown; and it may aid the conceptions of the learner, to observe the different modes of exposition used by two different writers.
“There can be no question, that he who travels in the same carriage, with the same external appearances of every kind by which a robber could be tempted or terrified, will be in equal danger of attack, whether he carry with him little of which he can be plundered, or such a booty as would impoverish him if it were lost. But there can be no question also, that though the probabilities of danger be the same, the fear of attack would, in these two cases, be very different; that, in the one case, he would laugh at the ridiculous terror of any one who journeyed with him, and expressed much alarm at the approach of evening; and that, in the other case, his own eye would watch suspiciously every horseman who approached, and would feel a sort of relief when he observed him pass carelessly and quietly along at a considerable distance behind.
“That the fear, as a mere emotion, should be more intense, according to the greatness of the object, might indeed be expected; and if this were all, there would be nothing wonderful in the state of mind which I have now described. But there is not merely a greater intensity of fear, there is, in spite of reflection, a greater belief of probability of attack. There is fear, in short, and fear to which we readily yield, when otherwise all fear would have seemed absurd. The reason of this it will perhaps not be difficult for you to discover, if you remember the explanations formerly given by me, of some analogous phenomena. The loss of what is valuable in itself, is of course a great affliction. The slightest possibility of such an evil makes the evil itself occur to us, as an object of conception, though not at first, perhaps, as an object of what can be termed fear. Its very greatness, however, makes it, when thus conceived, dwell longer in the mind; and it cannot dwell long, even as a mere conception, without exciting, by the common influence of suggestion, the different states of mind, associated with the conception of any great evil; of which associate or resulting states, in such circumstances, fear is one of the most constant and prominent. The fear is thus readily excited as an associate feeling; and when the fear has once been excited, as a mere associate feeling, it continues to be still more readily suggested again, at every moment, by the objects that suggested it, and with the perception or conception of which it has recently co-existed. There is a remarkable analogy to this process, in the phenomena of giddiness, to which I have before more than once alluded. Whether the height on which we stand, be elevated only a few feet, or have beneath it a precipitous abyss of a thousand fathoms, our footing, if all other circumstances be the same, is in itself equally sure. Yet though we look down, without any fear, on the gentle slope, in the one case, we shrink back in the other case with painful dismay. The lively conception of the evil which we should suffer in a fall down the dreadful descent, which is very naturally suggested by the mere sight of the precipice, suggests and keeps before us the images of horror in such a fall, and thus indirectly the emotions of fear, that are the natural accompaniments of such images, and that but for those images never would have arisen. We know well, on reflection, that it is a footing of the firmest rock, perhaps, on which we stand, but in spite of reflection, we feel, at least, at every other moment, as if this very rock itself were crumbling or sinking beneath us. In this case, as in the case of the traveller, the liveliness of the mere conception of evil that may be suffered, gives a sort of temporary probability to that which would seem to have little likelihood in itself, and which derives thus from mere imagination all the terror that is falsely embodied by the mind in things that exist around.
“It is not, then, any simple ratio of probabilities which regulates the rise of our hopes and fears, but of these combined with the magnitude or insignificance of the objects.”—Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind. Lecture LXV., vol. iii., p. 345—347. 2d ed.
Notwithstanding this, the ideas of Dr. Brown were so far from being clear and settled on the subject, that in the same work, Lecture VI., v. i., p. 115, he seems to affirm, that belief cannot be accounted for by association, but must be referred to instinct; though it is necessary to use the word seems, for it is not absolutely certain that he does not by instinct mean association.—(Author’s Note.)
375 From these illustrations, then, it does not appear that the anticipation of the future from the past, contains in it any thing peculiar. So far from standing by itself, a phenomenon sui generis it is included in one of the most general of the laws of the human mind. When Professor Stewart, therefore, and other writers, erect it into an object of wonder, a prodigy, a thing falling within no general rule; and tell us they can refer it to nothing but instinct; which is as much 376 as to say, to nothing at all; the term instinct, in all cases, being a name for nothing but our own ignorance; they only confess their failure in tracing the phenomena of the mind to the grand comprehensive law of association; to the admission of which, in its full extent, they seem to have had a most unaccountable, and a most unphilosophical aversion;—as if that simplicity, according to which one law is found 377 included in a higher, and that in a yet higher, till we arrive at a few which seem to include the whole, were not as much to be expected in the world of mind, as in the world of matter.[12*]