Propositions relating to individuals may be expressions either of past, or of future events. Belief in past events, upon our own experience, is memory; upon other men’s experience, is Belief in testimony; both of them resolved into association. Belief in future events, is the inseparable association of like consequents with like antecedents.
It is not deemed necessary to unfold these associations. It has been already done. It seems enough, if they are indicated here.[107] [108]
[107] The author has treated in different places several questions intimately allied. These are:—
1. The essential nature of the state of mind called Belief, the mental region whence it springs, or the phenomena that it is to be classed with—whether Intellect, Feeling, or Will.
2. The belief in the Past, and the belief in the Future; in what respect they differ from belief in the present. Inseparably implicated with this, if not prior to it and preparatory to it, is the difference between ideas of Memory and ideas of Imagination.
3. The nature of our continuous Mental Life, or Identity; or what is meant by the Permanent Existence of Mind.
The chapters on [Memory], and on [Belief], and the section on Identity ([Chap. XIV].), all treat of these questions, and contain profound original views on them all.
As regards the nature of Belief, he errs (in common with philosophers generally) in calling it a purely intellectual state. The consequence is to mar the explanations of the other points.
He displays a remarkably just and penetrating insight into the differences between Memory and Imagination, and between 394 our own self or Personality, and the personality of others; whereby he fully accounts for what is involved in Personal Identity.
To resolve the difficult phenomenon of Belief in Memory, of which the belief in the Permanent Existence of Mind is merely another expression, we must clear up the foundations of the state of Belief in general.