“Some of our ideas have a natural correspondence and connexion one with another. It is the office, and 379 excellence, of our reason, to trace these; and hold them together in that union and correspondence, which is founded in their peculiar beings.
“Besides this, there is another connexion of ideas, wholly owing to chance or custom. Ideas, that in themselves are not at all of kin, come to be so united in some men’s minds, that it is very hard to separate them. They always keep in company; and the one no sooner at any time comes into the understanding, but its associate appears with it. And if they are more than two which are thus united, the whole gang, always inseparable, shew themselves together.
“This wrong connexion, in our minds, of ideas in themselves loose and independent of one another, has such an influence, and is of so great force, to set us awry in our actions, as well moral as natural, passions, reasonings, and notions themselves; that perhaps there is not any one thing that deserves more to be looked after.
“The ideas of goblins and sprights have really no more to do with darkness than light. Yet let but a foolish maid inculcate these often in the mind of a child, and raise them there together, possibly he shall never be able to separate them again so long as he lives; but darkness shall ever afterwards bring with it those frightful ideas, and they shall be so joined, that he can no more bear the one than the other.
“A man receives a sensible injury from another; thinks on the man and that action over and over; and by ruminating on them strongly, or much in his mind, so cements those two ideas together, that he makes them almost one.”
“When this combination is settled, and while it 380 lasts, it is not in the power of reason to help us and relieve us from the effects of it. Ideas in our minds, when they are there, will operate according to their nature and circumstances. And, here, we see the cause why Time cures certain affections, which reason, though in the right, has not power over, nor is able, against them, to prevail with those who are apt to hearken to it in other cases.”
After adducing various examples, to illustrate the effect of these associations, in producing both vicious affections, and absurd opinions, he thus concludes:
“That which thus captivates our reasons, and leads men blindfold from common sense, will, when examined, be found to be what we are speaking of. Some independent ideas of no alliance to one another, are, by education, custom, and the constant din of their party, so coupled in their minds, that they always appear there together; and they can no more separate them in their thoughts, than if there were but one idea; and they operate as if they were so. This gives sense to jargon, demonstration to absurdity, and consistency to nonsense; and is the foundation of the greatest, I had almost said, of all, the errors in the world.”
Such is Mr. Locke’s account of wrong belief, or error. But wrong belief is belief, no less than right belief. Wrong belief, according to Locke, arises from a bad association of ideas. Right belief, then, arises from a right association of ideas; and this also was evidently Locke’s opinion. It is, thus, association, in both cases; only, in the case of wrong belief, the association is between ideas which ought not to 381 be associated; in the case of right belief, it is between ideas which ought to be associated. In the case of right belief, the association is between ideas which, in the language of Locke, “have a natural correspondence and connexion one with another:” in the case of wrong belief, it is between ideas, which “in themselves are not at all of kin, and are joined only by chance or custom.” The ideas of the colour, shape, and smell of the rose; the ideas of the spark falling on the gunpowder, and the explosion,—are the sorts of ideas which are understood, by Mr. Locke, as having “a natural correspondence and connexion.” Ideas, such as those of darkness, with those of ghosts; of the miseries suffered at school, with the reading of books,—are the kind which he describes as “not of kin, and united in the mind only by chance or custom.” This, put into accurate language, means, that when the ideas are connected in conformity with the connexions of things, the belief is right belief; when the ideas are connected not in conformity with the connexions of things, the belief is wrong belief. The ideas, however, which are connected in conformity with the connexions among things, are connected by custom, as much as those which are connected not in conformity with those connexions. And the custom which unites them in conformity, is by far the most common of the two. It is, in fact, the regular, the ordinary, the standard custom, the other only constitutes the exceptions.
II. We have divided Belief into, 1, Belief in events, real existences; 2, Belief in testimony; 3, Belief in the truth of propositions.