held.

"A grocer," writes Mr. Bagehot in an acute essay on "The Emotion of
Conviction,"[2] "has a full creed as to foreign policy, a young lady a
complete theory of the Sacraments, as to which neither has any doubt.
A girl in a country parsonage will be sure that Paris never can be
taken, or that Bismarck is a wretch." An attitude of philosophic
doubt, of suspended judgment, is repugnant to the natural man. Belief
is an independent joy to him.

This bias works in all men. While there is life, there is pressure
from within on belief, tending to push reason aside. The force of
the pressure, of course, varies with individual temperament, age, and
other circumstances. The young are more credulous than the old, as
having greater energy: they are apt, as Bacon puts it, to be "carried
away by the sanguine element in their temperament". Shakespeare's
Laertes is a study of the impulsive temperament, boldly contrasted
with Hamlet, who has more discourse of reason. When Laertes hears that
his father has been killed, he hurries home, collects a body of armed
sympathisers, bursts into the presence of the king, and threatens with
his vengeance--the wrong man. He never pauses to make inquiry: like
Hotspur he is "a wasp-stung and impatient fool"; he must wreak his
revenge on somebody, and at once. Hamlet's father also has been
murdered, but his reason must be satisfied before he proceeds to his
revenge, and when doubtful proof is offered, he waits for proof more
relative.

Bacon's _Idola Tribus_ and Dr. Bain's illustrations of incontinent
energy, are mostly examples of unreasoning intellectual activity,
hurried generalisations, unsound and superficial analogies, rash
hypotheses. Bacon quotes the case of the sceptic in the temple of
Poseidon, who, when shown the offerings of those who had made vows
in danger and been delivered, and asked whether he did not now
acknowledge the power of the god, replied: "But where are they who
made vows and yet perished?" This man answered rightly, says Bacon.
In dreams, omens, retributions, and such like, we are apt to remember
when they come true and to forget the cases when they fail. If we
have seen but one man of a nation, we are apt to conclude that all his
countrymen are like him; we cannot suspend our judgment till we have
seen more. Confident belief, as Dr. Bain remarks, is the primitive
attitude of the human mind: it is only by slow degrees that this is
corrected by experience. The old adag