Context

The previous two sections have developed the author’s account of belief. Section 7 describes belief as a lively idea that is related to or associated with a present impression. In Section 8, he explains how ideas are enlivened by a transition from lively perceptions, due to the ease of transition from the latter to the former on account of the relation or association. The three principles of association which facilitate such transitions are resemblance, contiguity, and causality.

Background

The treatment of the topics in this Section is unique to the author.

The Treatise

1. Although the author believes that he has presented convincing arguments concerning the nature and cause and belief in the previous two sections, he notes that the extraordinary and fundamental principles he has laid down there require further illustration and confirmation. It is demanded of the scrupulous philosopher that he produce every argument possible in support of his hypothesis and remove every objection to it.

2. The author notes that he has frequently claimed that the relations of resemblance and contiguity, no less than that of cause and effect, are to be consider’d as associating principles of thought, and as capable of conveying the imagination from one idea to another. [The claim is first made in Book I, Part I, Section 4.] He has also claimed that when the initial perception is of an object that is immediately present to the senses or memory, the associating principle conveys some of the force and vigour of the initial impression to the associated idea, by a united operation of that principle and the present objection. [This claim is defended in the previous Section.] These two claims [or what the author terms observations] were made in order to support his account of our judgments of cause and effect, according to which a present impression of a cause or effect enlivens the idea of the effect or cause, respectively, by its being associated with that idea by the natural relation of cause and effect. [See the concluding paragraphs of Section 6 for this account.] There is an analogy between the enlivening that takes place in causal judgments and that which occurs when a present impression is associated with an idea by way of the relations of resemblance and contiguity. But the author recognizes that this move might be turned against his account, and instead of a confirmation of my hypothesis, may become an objection to it. Suppose that the following three parts of his hypothesis are true:

• The relations of resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect are derived from the same principle.
• The effects of these relations in enlivening ideas is the same,
• Belief is nothing other than a more forcible and vivid conception of an idea.

3. The solution to the objection requires some initial groundwork before it can be stated. It is first noted that the ideas of memory have a force which is very close to that of immediate impressions. [See Part I, Section 3, paragraph 1 for the initial statement of this claim.] Because of their vivacity, ideas of memory must play a significant role in all the operations of the mind. Moreover, they are easily distinguished from ideas produced by the mere imagination. Together with our present impressions, the ideas of memory form a system, each of whose members we call a reality. The mind enlarges the system by adding a second system, consisting of ideas connected by the relation of cause and effect (which is the product of custom). The mind feels this connection as if it is determined and not subject to change. The first of these systems is the object of the memory and senses; the second of the judgment.

4. The system of judgment is what is responsible for filling in our world, in space and in time, with objects beyond those we presently perceive and can remember. By means of it I paint the universe in my imagination, and fix my attention on any part of it I please. For example, though I have never been to Rome, I form an idea of its situation on the earth, past events in its history, and the customs, religion and manner of its people. All these things which I believe about Rome consist of no more than forceful ideas, whose force is acquired from the relation of cause and effect, and which is distinguished by that force from the ideas produced by the mere imagination.

5. Now the author is in a position to explain the role of resemblance and contiguity in the production of belief. If an idea is of an object so related within a system of reality to the idea of another, it is natural that the relation assists the relation of cause and effect in enlivening the idea of the latter in the imagination. [Thus, for example, my belief in the location of Rome might enliven my idea of the Tiber River, on whose banks it is built.] Before elaborating on this claim, the author boldly extends it beyond the system of reality. My present impression may, by means of resemblance or contiguity, enliven my idea of something I acknowledge not to exist. An example is the way in which the view of a beautiful meadow might enliven a poet’s conception of the Elysian Fields [the pleasant resting place of heroes after death, according to Greek mythology]. The poet may also by imagination place himself in those fields, and by the imagined contiguity of himself with them enliven his idea of the imaginary place.

6. Although resemblance and contiguity have some enlivening capabilities, they depend almost entirely on the relation of cause and effect. If they operate on their own, their influence is very feeble and uncertain. The only persuasion [enlivening effect resulting in belief] that can be induced by these relations is due to causal connections. If, on the occasion of a present impression, we simply make up its relation to another idea, this relation will have a small effect, and there is no reason why we should repeat the conception of that particular relation upon the next appearance of the initial impression. There is no manner of necessity for the mind to feign any resembling and contiguous objects; and if it feigns such, there is as little necessity for it always to confine itself to the same, without any difference or variation. There is, in fact, so little reason to feign one idea rather than another, that to do so is only the result of pure caprice. Because caprice is fluctuating and uncertain, it cannot operate with any considerable degree of force and constancy. This is foreseen by the mind itself, as it senses right away the looseness of its actions, and the weak hold it has of objects. Experience and observation reinforce this feeling when we compare other instances of such feigning that we remember. Thus we form a general rule against the reposing any assurance in those momentary glimpses of light, which arise in the imagination from a feign’d resemblance and contiguity.

7. Belief based on the relation of cause and effect is strong in every respect in which mere imagining is weak.

• Its objects are unchangeable, not fluctuating,
• The impressions of memory, from which causal belief begins, never change in any considerable degree, while mere ideas that initiate a flight of fancy are very changeable,
• Each impression of memory triggers a precise idea of an object as something solid and real, rather than an imprecise idea of something shadowy and unreal.

8. The author has now rebutted the objection to his system [by showing how resemblance and contiguity have some, but very limited, influence on belief]. He now resolves to turn this defense into a proof of the present doctrine. The present doctrine in question is the claim that belief is nothing but a lively idea related to a present impression. The strategy is to find new examples to show that resemblance and contiguity both enliven the idea of an object, though weakly relative to causation, and increase our conviction of its existence. This would tie vivacity together with belief and support the thesis that vivacity is the only thing that converts a mere idea into a belief. This argument would be not inconsiderable.

9. The first example concerns contiguity. The author notes that it is commonly held among both Muslims and Christians that pilgrims who have been to the holy places of their religion are more zealous in their religious convictions than those who have not made the journey. And one’s belief in the miracles that occurred in the land of Galilee is increased when he remembers having been in that land. The lively idea of the places passes by an easy transition to the facts, which are suppos’d to have been related to them by contiguity, and encreases the belief by encreasing the vivacity of the conception. The remembrance of those places by the vulgar has the same force as an argument. And the cause of the increase of belief from contiguity is the same as that of reason [i.e., an easy, and therefore enlivening, transition in the imagination between a present impression and an idea].

10. Regarding the effects of resemblance, the author presents in this paragraph the first of three examples. The first example is our conviction that the motion of one body will follow the impulse [application of force] of another body. That such a conviction cannot in general be based on any quality of the first object, of which one has a present impression, had already been claimed by the author [in Section 2, paragraphs 5 and 12]. Only experience can be the basis of the inference from the perceived to the unperceived. The author takes this to be evident in itself, but he notes that some philosophers still maintain that we believe independently of experience that a moving object will cause motion in another object by impulse. He thinks that it is easy to refute this claim. If we could infer from the ideas of body, motion and impulse, then we could demonstrate the proposition in question, and it would amount to knowledge. Then there would be a formal contradiction in the thought of the cause without the effect and any other effect would be inconceivable. But we can easily think of other effects of the exercise of impulse of one moving body on another. [Here the author describes possible effects upon the first moving body rather than the body it strikes, as we might expect.] The result of impulse is thought independently of experience to be communication of motion. [What the author may have in mind is that when moving body A strikes body B, it loses some of its motion but continues to move forward. This seems to be the more consistent and natural result of the collision.] We can easily imagine a result other than communication of motion: body A comes to rest, it rebounds in a straight line away from B, it is annihilated, it moves in a circular or elliptical path, etc. Any one of these suppositions is consistent and natural, but communication of motion is more so. The reason it is more consistent and natural than any of these suppositions, or any other possible result, is that the reaction of the cause (the continued forward motion of A) most resembles the effect (the forward motion of B). When the relation of resemblance is conjoined with experience, we find A and B bound in the closest and most intimate manner to each other, so as to make us imagine them to be absolutely inseparable. The effect of resemblance, then, is the same as, or at least parallel to, the effect of experience. But all experience contributes is to associate ideas. From this the author concludes that the association of ideas [whether it be through experience, contiguity, or resemblance] is the sole cause of belief, in accord with his hypothesis.

11. The second example is taken from optics. The phenomenon, that all writers on optics acknowledge, is that the eye sees the same number of physical points at all times. Thus the view from a mountain-top presents no more points than that from inside a closet. The only reason we find the objects of our view to be so vastly different is experience, according to which we make judgments concerning the size of the object. The author claims that two things are evident here. The first is that the kind of judgment he has described is more vivid than in common reasoning. The second is that a visual image of the ocean from the top of a cliff is more striking than the sound of roaring waves. A proof of the relatively liveliness is the degree of pleasure attained from each. Another proof is that it is easy to confuse the sensation one has of the ocean with the judgment of its vastness. However, due to constant conjunction of the perceptions with the object in both cases, the inferences from the sight and from the sound are equally immediate and certain [so reason is not the source of the difference in vivacity]. Our conception is more vivid in the case of sight only because there is a resemblance between what we see and the ocean itself, while there is no such resemblance between what we hear and that body of water. This resemblance strengthens the relation, and conveys the vivacity of the impression to the related idea with an easier and more natural movement.

12. The third example is the effect of resemblance on credulity, or tendency to believe with little question the testimony of others. The author notes at the end of the paragraph that in this tendency to repose our faith in the words of others, we are less guided by experience than in any other matters. The hearing of the testimony of another is an effect, and we ought to reason from it to its cause by recourse to experience, as in all other causal inferences. Specifically, we should take into account the governing principles of human nature. But we mostly do not take these principles into account, but rather believe the most fantastic things that come out of the mouths of others, even when they are in total opposition to every-day experience. In testimony, the words of another are connected to ideas in their minds. The ideas, in turn, may or may not be connected to the facts, and we generally over-rate the likelihood of a true connection and are convinced of it beyond what experience tells us we should. The reason can only be that we think there is a resemblance between the ideas in the mind of the other and the facts which they purportedly represent. We take the ideas, which can only be effects of the facts, to be images of the facts, conveying those facts directly. This apparent resemblance is unlike the indirect or oblique way in which other effects are connected with the facts that cause them. It is because of this mistaken view of others’s ideas as resembling facts that we are so rash in accepting them.

13. The author has argued that our causal reasonings are fortified when resemblance is added to them. The converse phenomenon is that in the absence of resemblance in any great degree is able almost entirely to destroy them. The example given is that of ordinary people’s lack of belief in life after death, which results from their universal carelessness and stupidity. This incredulity is as obstinate as is their blind credulity in other matters. Learned people have observed this, and some eminent theologians have gone so far to say that though ordinary people do not formally disbelieve in eternal life, they really are infidels in their hearts, and have nothing like what we can call a belief of the eternal duration of their souls. The author invites us to consider the matter from two sides. The clergy preach eloquently of the importance of eternity, and yet even though exaggeration is called for in their rhetoric, even their strongest images fall far short of their subject. Those who hear their sermons profess to believe in the afterlife, but the author affirms that they do not really do so. Beliefs are acts of the mind that arise from custom, and lack of resemblance can undo the force of an idea established by custom. A future state is so far remov’d from our comprehension, and we have so obscure an idea of the manner, in which we shall exist after the dissolution of the body, that all the reasons we can invent, however strong in themselves, and however much assisted by education [frequent repetition], are never able with slow imaginations to surmount this difficulty, or bestow a sufficient authority and force on the idea. [If it is hard for someone to imagine something, it is hard for him to believe it.] It might be held that the problem in believing is that the event of the afterlife is too far in the future [remote]. But the author believes that it lies in the lack of resemblance between the future life and the present life. His reason is that people are in fact very concerned about what will happen after they die. Few people do not care about what will happen to their name, their family, their friends, and there country no matter how far into the future.

14. The lack of resemblance to this life destroys belief in the afterlife thoroughly, except in those cool heads who have meditated repeatedly on the arguments for its existence. The judgment of others is not true and establish’d like their judgments based on the testimony of travelers and historians. A conspicuous example is the comparative judgments people make about the punishment of others in this life and in a future life, when they view matters that do not concern themselves or about which they are not passionate. Despite their zealotry, Roman Catholics in such a position, who would consign non-believers to hell, will still condemn their persecution in this life. All we can say in excuse for this inconsistency is, that they really do not believe what they affirm concerning a future state; nor is there any better proof of it than the very inconsistency.

15. Further evidence of the author’s claim that most people do not believe in an afterlife is their reaction to fiery sermons that describe it dramatically. They take pleasure in their being terrified and prefer to hear preachers who excite the most dismal and gloomy passions in them. Yet in ordinary life, nothing is more disagreeable than fear and terror. The explanation is a lack of belief about the afterlife, which is like the lack of belief in the situation of a drama, where terror also instills pleasure. Because the mind does not really accept the truth of the words of the preacher, their only effect is an agreeable one: to enliven the mind and to fix its attention.

16. The author’s thesis that belief is the result of the enlivening of an idea by its association with a present impression receives further confirmation when we turn to customs other than those formed from constant conjunction and relations other than resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect. [These can be seen to raise belief in the same way, which reveals the great explanatory power of the hypothesis.] The author distinguishes between the kind of custom he has been invoking and another sort. The first kind arises from uniform experience, which makes for an easy transition from a resembling impression to a resembling idea. The idea through this custom is enlivened to the extent that it can be distinguished from a mere fiction of the imagination. The second kind, which does not involve any of this curious and almost artificial preparation, occurs when an idea is repeated frequently. It thereby becomes more lively and established in the mind, to the extent that it can be distinguished from any new and unusual idea. If the enlivening effect is the only thing these two causes have in common, and if the effects are proportional to their causes, then the author’s account of the origin of belief must be counted as satisfactory. And in fact, education is a custom of the second sort that works exactly in this way.

17. The effect of constant repetition of opinions and notions of things from our early childhood is to root them deeply in our minds, so much so that they cannot be expunged by all the powers of reason and experience. In fact, these opinions are so deeply entrenched in our minds that they on many occasions are more powerful than reasoning based on the constant and inseparable union of causes and effects. One might wish to say that the explanation is that the belief is produced by the vivacity of the idea due to custom. But the author goes further and proclaims the vivid idea and the belief to be individually the same. If belief were only the product of a reasoning and comparison of ideas, it could not be produced by custom. The only effect custom could have would be to generate some false comparisons. But custom could not produce a comparison itself. [Thus, custom does not produce a comparison of ideas leading to belief, but rather produces belief directly.]

18. A number of parallel instances of this phenomenon are cited. In each case, a comparison of ideas should produce belief, but custom prevents it from so doing. Someone who has lost a limb for a long time tries to use it. The family, and especially the servants, of a dead master cannot believe that he is gone and expect him to appear in the usual places. Conversely, people who have heard many tales about a famous person often say that they almost feel that they know him.

19. Proper consideration of this argument for the author’s account of belief from the effects of education will make it appear very convincing. It will be more convincing when it is recognized that education is one of the most common phenomena to be found in our mental life. The author professes that if we were to examine people’s opinions, we would find that more than half of them are the result of education, and that the principles, which are thus implicitly embrac’d over-ballance those, which are owing either to abstract reasoning or experience. A liar will come to remember his lies by repeating them frequently enough. Similarly, frequent repetition of an idea will influence the imagination (which is improperly called judgment) so strongly that it will resemble sensation and memory, and the conclusions of reason in its liveliness. Both education and reasoning are in reality built almost on the same foundation of custom and repetition as our experience or reasonings from cause and effect. But philosophers do not recognize the validity of beliefs based on education, because it is an artificial and not a natural cause whose maxims are often contrary to reason and even at times to one another.

Footnote. Since all probable reasoning is based on the imagination, it falls into suspicion because it resembles many of those whimsies and prejudices that are condemned because they are the products of the imagination. The author discovers an ambiguity in the term ‘imagination.’ He confesses that while it is quite contrary to true philosophy to conflate the two senses of the term, he has been oblig’d to do just that. The first sense opposes imagination to memory. Imagination in this sense is the faculty, by which we form our fainter ideas. The second sense opposes imagination to reason. Imagination remains the faculty by which we form our fainter ideas, except for those formed on the basis of demonstration or probable reasoning. At times, no contrast between either memory or reason is drawn, and the term can be understood either in the former, more inclusive, or the latter, more narrow, sense. And if not, the context will determine in which sense it is to be understood.

The Enquiry

The objection to the system discussed in this Section is not raised in the Enquiry. Education is mentioned only briefly. In Section 8, Hume notes that the differences in manners among people in different ages and countries attests to the great force of custom and education, which mould the human mind from its infancy, and form it into a fixed and established character. In Section 9, he uses the response of animals to discipline and education as evidence that they learn from experience. In Section 12, he advocates a moderate skepticism that is a necessary preparative to the study of philosophy, by preserving a proper impartiality in our judgments, and weaning our mind from all those prejudices, which we may have imbibed from education or rash opinion.