Page:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Hume (1748).djvu/94

 Cold or Passion of Anger, to such as never had an Experience of these Sentiments. is the true and proper Name of this Feeling; and no one is ever at a loss to know the Meaning of that Term; because every Man is every Moment conscious of the Sentitiment, represented by it. It may not, however, be improper to attempt a Description of this Sentiment; in hopes we may, by that means, arrive at some Analogies, that may afford a more perfect Explication of it. I say then, that Belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady Conception of an Object, than what the Imagination alone is ever able to attain. This Variety of Terms, which may seem so unphilosophical, is intended only to express that Act of the Mind, which renders Realities, or what is taken for such, 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, 'tis 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 fictitious 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 of Imagination can ever, of itself, reach Belief; 'tis evident, that Belief consists not in the peculiar Nature or Order of Ideas, but in the