The Influence of Belief
Table of Contents
Impressions and Ideas are Balanced by Nature
Philosophy derides education as a fallacious assent to any opinion.
Nevertheless, education prevails in the world.
Education is the cause why all systems are apt to be initially rejected as new and unusual.
Men will never be persuaded that all our actions and passions are derived from nothing but custom and habit.
To address this objection, I will talk about passions and the sense of beauty.
A perception of pain and pleasure is implanted in the human mind as the chief spring and moving principle of all its actions.
But pain and pleasure appear in the mind in 2 different ways:
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In impression to the actual feeling, or
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Only in idea
Impressions always actuate the soul more than ideas.
But not every idea has the same effect.
Nature has:
- proceeded in this case with caution.
- carefully avoided the inconveniences of two extremes.
If impressions alone influenced the will, we would always be subject to the greatest calamities since we would not be able to avoid them.
If every idea influenced our actions, then we would be restless.
Nature, therefore, has chosen a medium.
- We are not moved by every idea.
- We can be moved by some ideas.
An idle fiction has no efficacy.
[Beliefs are made up of ideas.]
The effect of belief is then to:
- raise up a simple idea to be equal with our impressions, and
- make it as influential on the passions.
Belief can only do this by making an idea have the force and vivacity of an impression.
The different degrees of force make all the original difference between an impression and an idea.
They must be the source of all the differences in the effects of these perceptions.
Their removal must be the cause of every new resemblance they acquire.
Wherever we can make an idea approach the impressions in force and vivacity, it will likewise imitate them in its influence on the mind.
Vice versa, where it imitates them in that influence as in the present case, this must proceed from its approaching them in force and vivacity.
Belief causes an idea to imitate the effects of the impressions.
Therefore, belief must make it resemble them in these qualities.
Belief is nothing but a more vivid and intense conception of any idea.
This may both:
- serve as an additional argument for the present system
- give us a notion how our reasonings from causation are able to operate on the will and passions.
Belief is almost absolutely needed to excite our passions.
The passions in their turn are very favourable to belief.
The facts that convey agreeable and painful emotions become more readily the objects of faith and opinion.
A coward has his fears easily awakened.
He readily assents to every account of danger he meets with, as a sorrowful person is very credulous of everything that nourishes his sadness.
When any affecting object is presented, it gives the alarm.
It immediately excites its proper passion, especially in persons naturally inclined to that passion.
This emotion passes through an easy transition to the imagination.
It diffuses itself over our idea of the affecting object.
It makes us form that idea with greater force and vivacity.
We consequently assent to it, according to the precedent system.
Admiration and surprise have the same effect as the other passions.
Because of their magnificent pretensions, quacks and projectors meet with a more easy faith among the vulgar, than if they had moderation.
The first astonishment which naturally attends their miraculous relations, spreads itself over the whole soul.
It so vivifies and enlivens the idea, that it resembles the inferences we draw from experience.
We shall find less difficulty in explaining the effects of beliefs on the imagination, however extraordinary they may appear.
We cannot take pleasure in any discourse where we cannot assent to those images presented to our fancy.
The conversation of those who have acquired a habit of lying, never gives any satisfaction.
The ideas they present to us are not attended with belief.
They make no impression on the mind.