The Nature of Probability

A question is asked to me.

I think of an answer.

I go over the impressions of my memory and senses.

I carry my thoughts from them to the objects commonly conjoined with them.

I feel a stronger conception on one side than on the other.

I prepare an answer based on this strong conception.

I re-examine my answer.

I realize that it is:

• sometimes correct and sometimes wrong.
• as regulated by contrary principles or causes.

In balancing these contrary causes, I reduce the assurance of my first answer.

I prepare a new answer, which is liable to another doubt.

This process can go on for infinity.

How can we retain belief in philosophy or common life, even after all this?

I answer that, after the first and second answer:

• the mind’s action becomes forced and unnatural, and
• the ideas become faint and obscure even if the principles of judgment and the balancing of opposite causes is the same as at the very start.

Yet their influence on the imagination and the vigour that they add or remove from the thought are not equal.

When the mind reaches its objects with difficulty, the same principles do not have same effect as in our more natural way of thinking.

The imagination does feel the same way as it felt in its common judgments and opinions.

The attention is stretched.

The posture of the mind is uneasy.

The spirits are diverted from their natural course.

They move differently from when they flowed in their usual channel.

It will not be very difficult to find similar instances if we want them.

Metaphysics will supply us abundantly.

The same argument which will convince us in a reasoning on history or politics, has less influence on philosopophical subjects.

This is because an effort of thought is needed to understand metaphysical subjects.

But this effort of thought disturbs our feelings which the belief depends on.

The case is the same in other subjects.

The regular flow of our feelings are hindered by the straining of the imagination.

We would never feel anything for a tragedy which portrays its heroes as very ingenious and witty in their misfortunes.

The soul’s emotions prevent any subtle reasoning and reflection.

This makes reasoning and reflection equally prejudicial to the emotions.

The mind and the physical body has a precise degree of force, which it employs in one action only at the expense of all the rest.

This is more obvious in actions that have different natures.

These different natures divert the mind’s force and changes its disposition.

It renders us:

• incapable of a sudden transition from one action to the other, and
• incapable of performing both actions at once.

Conviction from a subtle reasoning decreases the more the imagination struggles to enter into that reasoning.

Dogma and Skepticism are Both Based on Doubt, But Operate in Opposite Ways

Belief is a lively conception.

It can never be entire if it is not founded on something natural and easy.

This is the true state of the question.

Some people use an expeditious way to totally reject the arguments of skeptics without examination.

We cannot approve of this expeditious way.

They say that:

• if the skeptical reasonings are strong, then it is a proof that reason may have some force and authority, and
• if the skeptical reasonings are weak, then reason can never be enough to invalidate all the conclusions of our understanding.

That argument is not fair.

• This is because skeptical reasonings are successively strong and weak, based on the mind’s successive dispositions.

Reason initially takes the throne.

• It prescribes laws and imposes maxims with an absolute authority.

Her enemy is doubt.

• It takes shelter under her protection*.

It uses rational arguments to prove the fallaciousness and imbecility of reason, producing a patent under her band and seal.

This patent initially has an authority proportional to the present and immediate authority of reason, from which it is derived.

But as it is contradictory to reason, it gradually reduces the force of reason and its own at the same time.

Until finally, they both vanish into nothing, by a regular and just reduction.

The skeptical and dogmatical reasons are of the same kind.

But they are contrary in their operation and tendency.

Where the skepticism is strong, it has an enemy of equal force in dogma.

Their forces were at first equal.

They still continue to be equal as long as either of them subsists.

None of them loses any force in the contest, without taking as much from its antagonist.

It is happy that nature:

• breaks the force of all skeptical arguments in time, and
• keeps skeptical arguments from having any considerable influence on the understanding.

Skeptical arguments never self-destruct.

If nature did not break them, they would have:

• subverted all conviction, and
• totally destroyed human reason.