It is certainly no easy problem in philosophy to determine where the resolution of the complex is to cease, at what point we must stop, because in the presence of an individual thing and a simple activity. At any rate, we reach such a point psychologically in the conscious subject, and that activity in consciousness we call attention. If this be allowed, Hume's critique of the notion of efficacy is really wide of the mark. "Some1," he says, "have asserted that we feel an energy or power in our own mind; and that, having in this manner acquir'd the idea of power, we transfer that quality to matter, where we are not able immediately to discover it....But to convince us how fallacious this reasoning is, we need only consider that the will, being here consider'd as a cause, has no more a discoverable connexion with its effects. than any material cause has with its proper effect....The effect there [too, ie. in 'the empire of the will over our mind'] is distinguishable and separable from the cause, and could not be foreseen without the experience of their constant conjunction?." This is logical analysis, not psychological; the point is that the will is not considered as a cause and distinguished from its effects, nor in fact considered at all. It is not a case of sequence between two separable 'impressions.' We cannot really make the indefinite regress that such logical distinctions as that between the conscious subject and its activity implies. Moreover, our activity as such is not directly presented at all: we are, being active; and further than this psychological analysis will not go3. There are, as we have seen, two ways in which this activity is manifested, the receptive or passive and the motor or active in the stricter sense': our experience of these we project in predicating causal relation.

1 Hume here has Locke and Berkeley specially in view. On the particular question, see Locke, Essay, bk. II. c. xxi. §§ 3-5.

Op. cit. p. 455.

In an article (Mind, 1886, p. 317) Mr F. H. Bradley created some stir by declaring that "the present use of these phrases [active, energy] is little better than a scandal and a main obstacle in the path of English psychology." In Mind for 1902 and 1903 he has made important contributions towards clearing up the supposed confusion, and the subject is still being debated. But the main contention of the text, that activity is for psychology at all events ultimate and unanalyzable, seems still to await refutation. A brief notice of some of the diverse views obtaining will be found in my address, "The Problems of General Psychology," Philosophical Review (1904), pp. 608 ff.

Cf. ch. ii, § 6, p. 57.

But two halves do not make a whole; so we have no singly complete experience of effectuation, for the simple reason that we cannot be two things at once. We are guided in piecing it together by the temporal and spatial relations of the things concerned. Hence, perhaps, some of the antinomies that beset this concept. In its earliest form, then, the so-called 'necessary' connexion of cause and effect in a concrete instance is perhaps nothing more than the physical effort we experience in making or forcing a thing to 'behave' as we want. The process which as we first observe it seems one event-occurring in one place at one time-we afterwards analyze into two processes or eventsone pertaining to the agent, the other to the patient, or more exactly into a case of their interaction. Afterwards when any two events have frequently recurred in the same temporal order -even though not contiguous in space—we are prone to conclude that they are causally connected, although there is no suggestion of physical constraint. Then emerges the very different 'necessity' postulated when we talk of natural laws, due primarily, as Hume supposed, to the strength of expectation or to our primitive credulity. Finally, when upon the basis of such associated uniformities of sequence a definite intellectual elaboration of such material supervenes, the logical necessity of reason and consequent finds a place, and so far as deduction is applicable cause and reason become interchangeable ideas. Science then finds it can dispense with the anthropomorphism of the causal category, but the place of this in concrete experience is thereby in no way impugned.

iii. As regards the category of End and Means—its anthropomorphic character is still more evident. There are no definite spatial and temporal relations belonging to it as such, that remain as distinctive objective factors, with which positive science could deal when its subjective factors are eliminated. So far Kant was justified in denying to it the rank that he accorded to the two other real categories-Substance and Cause. But important as this difference may be epistemologically, the fact-on which Kant strenuously insisted-that this category is indispensable to us as a clue to the understanding of organized beings and "first obtains objective reality from a consideration of such beings" is sufficient to justify its recognition here. Even if it be but 'a peculiarity of our intelligence,' still that is enough

for us. The psychological interest of this category lies, however, elsewhere, viz. in connexion with the characterization of things as having worth or value and we may therefore defer any further reference to it till we attempt to treat of that?.

1 Cf. Kant's Critique of the Judgment, §§ 65, 67.

2 Cf. below, ch. xvi.

CHAPTER XIV

BELIEF, CERTAINTY AND FAITH

Psychological Topic Defined.

§ 1. There are psychological and there are epistemological discussions innumerable concerning belief and certainty. It is important to keep the two discussions distinct and yet they are almost invariably blended; for psychology and epistemology themselves are only gradually getting out of each other's way, and the fact that they often use the same terms renders such differentiation difficult. Moreover they have both used the same terms because both alike relate to experience, though from different standpoints or under different aspects. We have come upon these differences several times already1 and so without further exposition here, we may seek at once to clear the way for our psychological inquiry.

Belief is sometimes used in a wider, sometimes in a narrower sense, the one including certainty, the other excluding it: the wider belonging to the psychological, the narrower to the epistemological standpoint. Epistemology has constantly to distinguish between belief and knowledge as differing in kind, since belief is always, and (scientific) knowledge is never, a private and personal matter. Psychologically, however-for the individual that is to say-his belief and his knowledge (or certainty) differ only in degree. Certainty is then regarded as the upper limit of such personal belief: it may be represented by unity, lower degrees being represented by fractions, as in the 'odds' of betting transactions, for example. But epistemology also contrasts knowledge with probability in a similar

1 Cf. ch. i, § 3, p. 18; ch. ii, § 1; ch. vi, § 3, p. 144; ch. xii, § 2, p. 293.

2 The two Mills, for example, adopted the former, Locke and Bain, the latter, usage.

fashion, save that the difference is then referred not to the psychological causes of belief but to its logical grounds. With these the epistemologist is exclusively concerned; the psychologist, however, not at all. His business is primarily with the believing, together with its causes and effects, as subjective, not with the grounds of the belief itself, as objective: what interests him is a living process, not a logical structure. Despite this wide difference the one term 'certainty' is often applied to both; though they are distinguished as respectively subjective certainty and objective certainty: so we say indifferently 'I am certain of' and 'It is certain that.' Such phraseology is often convenient; yet where scientific exactness is important it is to be avoided, and there are better terms available. At all events psychology is not interested in objective certainty or truth as such, but only in subjective certainty or conviction. Truth belongs entirely to the universe of propositions: certainty implies a complete state of mind. In this state propositions enter not as true or false but simply as believed or not believed. Whether propositions are believed or not is to be ascertained not by considering them but by observing the feeling they produce and the active attitude to which such feeling leads. How far there are exceptions to this generalisation sufficing to disprove it, or even, when carefully examined, to limit it, remains to be seen1.

Direct (Objective) Causes of Belief.

§ 2. Meanwhile it is at least safe to say that the most numerous and what we may call the typical cases of belief as such involve purely subjective factors, whereas these are absent altogether from that ideal of knowledge which is the lodestar of epistemology: there objective factors are the sole determinants. Yet even in the most subjectively conditioned belief objective factors are the immediate determinants, objective,' that is to say in the psychological, yet far enough, it may be, from objective in the epistemological, sense. We may begin then by examining first of all the cases in which the characteristics of belief are clearest, the cases, that is, where the objective situation before the subject is such that he may, and if challenged would, say: "I am certain." 1 Cf. § 2, p. 353. 2 Cf. § 4, p. 355.