Page:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Hume (1748).djvu/92



is nothing more free than the Imagination of Man; and tho' it cannot exceed that original Stock of Ideas, which is furnish'd by our internal and external Senses, it has unlimited Power of mixing, compounding, separating and dividing these Ideas, to all the Varieties of Fiction and Vision. It can feign a Train of Events, with all the Appearance of Reality, ascribe to them a particular Time and Place, conceive them as existent, and paint them out to itself with every Circumstance, that belongs to any historical Fact, which it believes with the greatest Certainty. Wherein, therefore, consists the Difference betwixt such a Fiction and Belief? It lies not merely in any peculiar Idea, which is annex'd to a Conception, that commands our assent, and which is wanting to every known Fiction. For as the Mind has Authority over all its Ideas, it could voluntarily annex this particular Idea to any Fiction, and consequently be able to believe whatever it pleases; contrary to what we find by daily Experience. We can, in our Conception, join the Head of a Man to the Body of a Horse; but it is not in our Power to believe, that such an Animal has ever really existed.

follows, therefore, that the Difference betwixt Fiction and Belief lies in some Sentiment or Feeling,