Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/768

750 this matter. I am convinced it would repay the labor. The different effects produced by different sorts of stimulants would make a valuable contribution to this subject: for instance, coffee seems to awaken almost as many doubts as it lays, while alcoholic stimulants seem invariably to dispel doubt and enthrone certitude.

Some men depend upon their pipe to give them the needed start to the conclusion of problems. I confess that I seldom feel so sure of the solidity and reality of the world as when I have my favorite amber stem firm set between my teeth. And much of the tenacity of religious conviction of our Methodist and Baptist brethren is due to conceiving the articles of their creed with passion bred in the excitement of camp meetings.

Perhaps more marked than any of these is the effect of sexual feeling. It is practically impossible for either of two people to believe in the love of the other without feeling some warmth of feeling himself. It is the feeling that awakens doubt or conviction.

This leads naturally to the interrelation of feelings and beliefs. The close relation of love and religion has been a topic for ages. It is, I think, remarkable how many women disappointed in love turn to religion for consolation. Girls and women who have never revealed the slightest interest in church or creed become, under the influence of an unrequited passion, the most ardent believers. There is no reason in such cases to charge hypocrisy. They only show how much belief depends upon emotion. It is as if the feelings, deeply stirred, must react strongly. So long as the nature is left passive, belief, whether about love, politics, or religion, seems needless; but once the feelings are aroused, a hunger appears that demands satisfaction in some conviction or other.

The physiological conditions of belief, then, are, in a word, stimulation—excitement. There are also, as we agreed, mental conditions of belief. These are, as follows from the volitional nature of the function, such as conduce to a heightened state of all the mental activities, but especially the imagination and the affections.

Repetition or pondering over a matter helps us to believe it. We accept many a thing by its familiarity. Many of our creeds are believed in this way. The mental condition of acquiescence is brought about by frequent repetition, just as memory is made firm by the same means. Pondering over things, themselves imaginary, makes them real to us. Prophets come to believe in themselves and their mission, not so much by reasoning about it, but by steadfastly fixing the goal of their desire in the mind until, out of a fancy, it grows to a clear conception, and from a conception becomes, for them at least, a reality. So with us all;