I would explain this manner, I
scarce find any word that fully answers the case, but am obliged to have
recourse to every one's feeling, in order to give him a perfect notion
of this operation of the mind. An idea assented to FEELS different
from a fictitious idea, that the fancy alone presents to us: And this
different feeling I endeavour to explain by calling it a superior force,
or vivacity, or solidity, or FIRMNESS, or steadiness. This variety of
terms, which may seem so unphilosophical, is intended only to express
that act of the mind, which renders realities more present to us than
fictions, causes them to weigh more in the thought, and gives them a
superior influence on the passions and imagination. Provided we
agree about the thing, it is needless to dispute about the terms. The
imagination has the command over all its ideas, and can join, and mix,
and vary them in all the ways possible. It may conceive objects with
all the circumstances of place and time. It may set them, in a manner,
before our eyes in their true colours, just as they might have existed.
But as it is impossible, that that faculty can ever, of itself, reach
belief, it is evident, that belief consists not in the nature and
order of our ideas, but in the manner of their conception, and in
their feeling to the mind. T confess, that it is impossible to explain
perfectly this feeling or manner of conception. We may make use of
words, that express something near it. But its true and proper name
is belief, which is a term that every one sufficiently understands in
common life. And in philosophy we can go no farther, than assert, that
it is something felt by the mind, which distinguishes the ideas of the
judgment from the fictions of the imagination. It gives them more force
and influence; makes them appear of greater importance; infixes them in
the mind; and renders them the governing principles of all our actions.

This definition will also be found to be entirely conformable to every
one's feeling and experience. Nothing is more evident, than that those
ideas, to which we assent, are more strong, firm and vivid, than the
loose reveries of a castle-builder. If one person sits down to read a
book as a romance, and another as a true history, they plainly receive
the same ideas, and in the same order; nor does the incredulity of the
one, and the belief of the other hinder them from putting the very
same sense upon their author. His words produce the sam