n appeal to
individual testimony. Viewed in this light, it is a question for the
present, for some few already allege that in their case philosophic
reasonings exercise an appreciable effect on these beliefs. And so far
as this is so, the man of scientific temper will feel that there is a
question for him.

It is evident, however, that the question of the persistence of these
fundamental beliefs is much more one for the future than for the
present. The correction of a clearly detected illusion is, as I have
more than once remarked, a slow process. An illusion such as the
apparent movement of the sun will persist as a partially developed error
long after it has been convicted. And it may be that the fundamental
beliefs here referred to, even if presumably illusory, are destined to
exercise their spell for long ages yet.

Whether this will be the case or not, whether these intuitive beliefs
are destined slowly to decay and be dissolved as time rolls on, or
whether they will retain an eternal youth, is a question which we of
to-day seem, on a first view of the matter, to have no way of answering
which does not assume the very point in question--the truth or falsity
of the belief. This much may, however, be said. The associationist who
resolves these erroneous intuitions into the play of association, admits
that the forces at work generating and consolidating the illusory belief
are constant and permanent forces, and such as are not likely to be less
effective in the future than they have been in the past. Thus, he
teaches that the intuition of the single object in the act of perception
owes its strength to "inseparable association," according to which law
the ideas of the separate "possibilities of sensation," which are all we
know of the object, coalesce in the shape of an idea of a single uniting
substance. He adds, perhaps, that heredity has tended, and will still
tend, to fix the habit of thus transforming an actual multiplicity into
an imaginary unity. And in thus arguing, he is allowing that the
illusion is one which, to say the least of it, it will always be
exceedingly difficult for reason to dislodge.

In view of this uncertainty, and of the possibility, if not the
probability, of these beliefs remaining as they have remained, at least
approximately universal, the man of science will probably be disposed to
hold himself indifferently to the question. He will be inclined to say,
"What does it matter whether you