h proven through observation, has made itself acceptable
only with great difficulty. It has had to struggle on the one hand
against the prejudices of common-sense for which imagination is
synonymous with sham and vain appearance and opposed to the real as
non-being to being; on the other hand, against a doctrine of the
logicians who maintain that the idea is at first merely conceived with
no affirmation of existence or non-existence (_apprehensio simplex_).
This position, legitimate in logic, which is an abstract science, is
altogether unacceptable in psychology, a concrete science. The
psychological viewpoint giving the true nature of the image has
prevailed little by little. Spinoza already asserts "that
representations considered by themselves contain no errors," and he
"denies that it is possible to perceive [represent] without affirming."
More explicitly, Hume assigns belief to our subjective dispositions:
Belief does not depend on the nature of the idea, but on the manner in
which we conceive it. Existence is not a quality added to it by us; it
is founded on habit and is irresistible. The difference between fiction
and belief consists of a feeling added to the latter but not to the
former. Dugald Stewart treats the question purely as a psychologist
following the experimental method. He enumerates very many facts whence
he concludes that imagination is always accompanied by an act of belief,
but for which fact the more vivid the image, the less one would believe
it; but just the contrary happens--the strong representation commands
persuasion like sensation itself. Finally, Taine treats the subject
methodically, by studying the nature of the image and its primitive
character of hallucination.[42] At present, I think, there is no
psychologist who does not regard as proven that the image, when it
enters consciousness, has two moments. During the first, it is
objective, appearing as a full and complete reality; during the second,
which is definitive, it is deprived of its objectivity, reduced to a
completely internal event, through the effect of other states of
consciousness which oppose and finally annihilate its objective
character. There is an affirmation, then negation; impulse, then
inhibition.

Faith, being only a mode of existence, an attitude of the mind, owes its
creative and vivifying power to general dispositions of our
constitution. Besides the intellectual element which is its content, its
material--the t