overawed by such terrors; they are not on that account to be defended.

The vexed question of punishability is raised by certain forms of insanity. Intellectual delusion is the one decisive circumstance that usually exempts from punishment, while placing the patient under adequate restraint; as when an unfortunate being fancies that every one that he meets is a conspirator against him. The difficult case is what is called 'moral insanity,' where there are impulses morbidly strong, which can yet be to some degree counterworked by motives, or the apprehension of consequences. There is a shading off here into the region of mere passionate impulse, such as persons counted perfectly sane may fall victims to. It is impossible to deal with such cases by a theoretical rule. They must be treated on their individual merits as they occur.*

man is

*Responsibility for Belief. The dictum of Lord Brougham, that no longer accountable to man for his belief, over which he has himself no control,' was the occasion of a serious controversy at the time it was uttered (see, among others, Wardlaw's Treatise on Accountability). Reduced to precise terms the meaning is-a man's belief being involuntary, he is not punishable for it. The point, therefore, is how far is belief a voluntary function, for it is known to every one that the will does to some extent influence it.

I. Whatever may be true of the internal conviction, the outward profession of belief is voluntary, and so are the actions consequent upon what we believe. Now it is these external manifestations alone that society can lay hold of, and they being suppressible, on sufficient motive, the law can supply that motive, and lead to their suppression accordingly. It is not, therefore, nugatory or absurd, to make laws against belief; for if every expression of opinion, or consequent proceeding, can be kept down, the purpose is fully served.

II. It has been always open to remark, how completely human beings are the slaves of circumstances in the opinions that they entertain upon all subjects that do not appeal directly to the senses and daily experience. We see in one country one set of beliefs handed down unchanged for generations, and in another country a totally different set equally persistent. Seeing, then, that there is so little self-originating, or independent, judgment among mankind, it is evidently possible, by external means, and the power of motives, to make some one opinion prevail rather than another. I might be a Roman Catholic born, yet with a mind so constituted, as irresistibly to embrace the Protestant faith on examining its creed. But if I am under a régime that

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appends heavy penalties to my becoming a Protestant, the effect might be to deter me from ever reading a book, or listening to a preacher, or hearing any argument on the Protestant side. It is in the power of my will to open or shut my eyes, although what I am to see when I do open them is not voluntary. The legislator, therefore, in hedging one belief round with heavy penalties may be a tyrant, but he is no fool.

There are many arts of swaying men's convictions. Look at the whole array of weapons in the armoury of the skilful rhetorician. Look at the powers of bribery and corruption in party warfare. Consider also the effect of constantly hearing one point of view to the exclusion of all others. There is the greatest scope for the exercise of arts in swaying men from their own genuine tendencies into some prescribed path. It would be in the last degree incorrect to say that punishment cannot succeed in inducing belief, but whether it be right to employ it for that purpose is merely the old question of political and social liberty.

There is a length that external pressure cannot go in compelling a man's convictions. It is not possible for any power to make me believe that three times four is six. I may for once so far succumb to a tremendous threat, as to affirm this proposition in words, but I feel that if I am to give in to propositions of a like nature generally, I may as well go to the stake at once, for life under such an arithmetic is not worth a week's purchase. If every bargain that I engage in is to be subject to such reasoning, all my security has vanished, and the sooner I quit the better. There are, however, so many affirmations constantly afloat, and never brought to any practical test, that we may swallow a great many inconsistencies without difficulty. So long as action is not entered on we are not obliged to be consistent; and accordingly it is very usual for a man to assent to a number of propositions irreconcileable with one another; while it is still true that in a matter of plain experience, involving one's immediate actions and welfare, it is beyond the power of motive to change one's decided convictions. Sovereign power, whether legal or social, has plenty of room in the outworks of belief, without affecting this inner sanctuary, of pressing and practical experience. The greatest despot stops short of the pence table; he knows that religion, political theories, and many other departments of belief are at his mercy, and to these he applies the screw. After all, therefore, the gist of Lord Brougham's dictum is nothing else than the issue, contested now for centuries, as to freedom of thought and opinion.

BELIEF.

1. IT will be readily admitted that the state of mind called

Belief is, in many cases, a concomitant of our activity. But I mean to go farther than this, and to affirm that belief has no meaning, except in reference to our actions; the essence, or import of it is such as to place it under the region of the will. We shall see that an intellectual notion, or conception, is likewise indispensable to the act of believing, but no mere conception that does not directly or indirectly implicate our voluntary exertions, can ever amount to the state in question. The present chapter is devoted to set forth this position in all its consequences.

In the primitive aspect of volition, which also continues to be exemplified through the whole of life, an action once begun by spontaneous accident is maintained, when it sensibly alleviates a pain, or nurses a pleasure. Here there is no place for belief, any more than for plot-interest, deliberation, resolution, or desire. The feeling, that is, the end, prompts at once the suitable exercise of the voluntary organs, and that is all. In this primitive and elementary fact, we have the foundation of the most complicated forms of voluntary procedure, but as yet we have no indication of those subsequent developments. The process in that rudimentary stage might be termed reflex, although differing in a most vital consideration from the reflex actions commonly recognised, namely, the presence of consciousness as an essential link of the sequence. There is an instantaneous response to the state of pleasure or pain, in the shape of some voluntary movement modifying, or sustaining, that state, according as the case may be. Circumstances arise, however, to prevent this immediateness of response, or to interpose delay between the occurrence of the feeling that is the motive and the movements that answer

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to it. We have seen that this condition of suspense is the occasion of those new phases of the will described by the terms desire, deliberation, intention, resolution, choice, and the like; and the very same condition of suspense is necessary to the manifestation of Belief. If every pain could be met by an appropriate movement for relieving it on the instant, and the same with every pleasure, we might still talk of doing or acting, but there would be no place for believing. When I imbibe the water in contact with my lips, under the pain of thirst, I perform a voluntary act in which belief might by a fiction be said to be implied; but if all my actions were of this nature, the state of belief would never have been signalized as a phenomenon of the human mind, just as no place would be given to deliberation.

2. When the matter is examined closely, we find that it is the class of intermediate actions, of themselves indifferent, that give origin to the phenomenon now before us. By the ultimate action of the will, I imbibe the water that sensibly appeases my thirst, but there is nothing in the primordial endowment that would provoke me to lift a cup of liquid to my mouth, or that would inspire the thirsty animal to run to the brook. These movements must be sustained by something else than the feeling of pain relieved, for as yet no such feeling comes of them. That something which keeps the energy of an animal alive, with no immediate fruition, is a new power not involved in the original mechanism of our voluntary nature, but arising more or less as a result of experience. In whatever way it originates, the name that we principally designate it by is Belief. The primordial form of belief is expectation of some contingent future about to follow on our action. Wherever any creature is found performing an action, indifferent in itself, with a view to some end, and adhering to that action with the same energy that would be manifested under the actual fruition of the end, we say that the animal possesses confidence, or belief, in the sequence of two different things, or in a certain arrangement of nature, whereby one phenomenon succeeds to another. The glistening surface of

a pool, or rivulet, presented to the eye, can give no satisfaction to the agonies of thirst; but such is the firm connexion established in the mind of man and beast between the two properties of the same object, that the presentation to the eye fires the energies of pursuit no less strongly than the actual contact with the alimentary surface. An alliance so formed is a genuine example of the condition of belief.

3. While, therefore, Action is the basis, and ultimate criterion, of belief, there enters into it as a necessary element some cognisance of the order of nature, or the course of the world. In using means to any end, we proceed upon the assumption of an alliance between two natural facts or phenomena, and we are said to have a trust, confidence, or faith, in that alliance. An animal, in judging of its food by the mere sight, or in going to a place of shelter, recognises certain coincidences of natural properties, and manifests to the full a state of belief regarding them. The humblest insect that has a fixed home, or a known resort for the supply of its wants, is gifted with the faculty of believing. Every new coincidence introduced into the routine of an animal's existence, and proceeded on in the accomplishment of its ends, is a new article of belief. The infant, who has found the way to the mother's breast for food, and to her side for warmth, has made progress in the power of faith; and the same career goes on enlarging through the whole of life. Nothing can be set forth as belief that does not implicate in some way or other the order, arrangements, or sequences of the universe. Not merely the sober and certain realities of every man's experience, but also the superstitions, dreams, vagaries, that have found admittance among the most ignorant and mis-led of human beings, are conversant with the same field. When we people the air with supernatural beings, and fill the void of nature with demons, ghosts, and spirits; when we practise incantations, auguries, charms, and sacrificial rites, we are the victims of a faith as decided and strong as our confidence in the most familiar occurrences of our daily life. In all such cases, the genuineness of the state of belief is tested by the