Page:Observations on Man 1834.djvu/243

 and it frequently draws after it the rational, as in the other instances above alleged.

The evidence for future facts is of the same kind with that for the propositions concerning natural bodies, being like it, taken from induction and analogy. This is the cause of the rational assent. The practical depends upon the recurrency of the ideas, and the degree of agitation produced by them in the mind. Hence reflection makes the practical assent grow for a long time after the rational is arisen to its height; or if the practical arise without the rational, in any considerable degree, which is often the case, it will generate the rational. Thus the sanguine are apt to believe and assert what they hope, and the timorous what they fear.

There are many speculative abstracted propositions in logic, metaphysics, ethics, controversial divinity, &c. the evidence for which is the coincidence or analogy of the abstract terms, in certain particular applications of them, or as considered in their grammatical relations. This causes the rational assent. As to the practical assent or dissent, it arises from the ideas of importance, reverence, piety, duty, ambition, jealousy, envy, self-interest, &c. which intermix themselves in these subjects, and, by doing so, in some cases add great strength to the rational assent; in others destroy it, and convert it into its opposite.

And thus it appears, that rational assent has different causes in propositions of different kinds, and practical likewise; that the causes of rational are also different from those of practical; that there is, however, a great affinity, and general resemblance, in all the causes; that rational and practical assent exert a perpetual reciprocal effect upon one another; and consequently, that the ideas belonging to assent and dissent, and their equivalents and relatives, are highly complex ones, unless in the cases of very simple propositions, such as mathematical ones. For besides the coincidence of ideas and terms, they include, in other cases, ideas of utility, importance, respect, disrespect, ridicule, religious affections, hope, fear, &c. and bear some gross general proportion to the vividness of these ideas.

. I. When a person says, video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor; it shews that the rational and practical assent are at variance, that they have opposite causes, and that neither of these has yet destroyed the other.

. II. The rational and practical faith in religious matters are excellent means of begetting each other.

. III. Vicious men, i.e. all persons who want practical faith, must be prejudiced against the historical and other rational evidences in favour of revealed religion.

. IV. It is impossible any person should be so sceptical, as not to have the complex ideas denoted by assent and dissent associated with a great variety of propositions, in the same manner, as in other persons; just as he must have the same