Although I am unable to admit that there is nothing in belief but an inseparable association, and although I maintain that there may be belief without an inseparable association, I can still accept this explanation of the formation of an association between the subject and predicate of the conclusion, which, when close and intense, has, as we have seen, a strong tendency to generate belief. But to shew what it is that gives the belief its validity, we must fall back on logical laws, the laws of evidence. And independently of the question of validity, we shall find in the reliance on those laws, so far as they are understood, the source and origin of all beliefs, whether well or ill-founded, which are not the almost mechanical or automatic products of a strong association—of the lively suggestion of an idea. We may therefore pass at once to the nature of Evidence, which is the subject of the next chapter.
I venture to refer, in passing, to those chapters in my System of Logic, in which I have maintained, contrary to what is laid down in this chapter, that Ratiocination does not consist of Syllogisms; that the Syllogism is not the analysis of what the mind does in reasoning, but merely a useful formula into which it can translate its reasonings, gaining thereby a great increase in the security for their correctness.—Ed.
CHAPTER XIII.
EVIDENCE.
“In consequence of some very wonderful laws, which regulate the successions of our mental phenomena, the science of mind is, in all its most important respects, a science of analysis.” Brown’s Lect., i., 108.
BEFORE leaving the subject of Belief, it will be proper to shew, in a few words, what is included, under the name Evidence. Evidence, is either the same thing with Belief, or it is the antecedent, of which Belief is the consequent.
Belief we have seen to be of two sorts: Belief of events; Belief of propositions.
Of events, believed on our own experience, the evidence of the present is sense; of the past, memory; and in these cases, the evidence and the belief are not two things, but one and the same thing. The lamp, which at this moment lights me, I say that I see burning, and that I believe it burning. These are two names of one and the same state of consciousness.—“I remember it was burning at the same hour last night,” and “I believe it was burning at the same hour last night,” are also two expressions for the same thing.—In the simple anticipation of the future, from the past, also, the evidence, and the belief, are 429 not two things, but one and the same thing. There is a close and inseparable association of the idea of a like antecedent, with the idea of a like consequent. This has not a single name, like memory; but, like memory, it is both evidence and belief.
The case of testimony is different. The Testimony is one thing, the Belief is another. The name Evidence is given to the testimony. The association of the testimony, with the event testified, is the belief.