members of a series, the theory ought also to be called upon to justify all the opinions which average respectable men might be inclined to form about them, as well as the conduct they might choose to pursue in consequence. It is obvious that to enter upon such considerations as these is to diverge from our proper ground. We are concerned, in these cases, with the actions of men only, as given in statistics; with the emotions they experience in the performance of these actions we have no direct concern whatever. The error is the same as if any one were to confound, in political economy, value in use with value in exchange, and object to measuring the value of a loaf by its cost of production, because bread is worth more to a man when he is hungry than it is just after his
§ 31. One class of emotions indeed ought to be excepted, which, from the apparent uniformity and consistency with which they show themselves in different persons and at different times, do really present some better claim to consideration. In connection with a science of inference they can never indeed be regarded as more than an accident of what is essential to the subject, but compared with other emotions they seem to be inseparable accidents.
The reader will remember that attention was drawn in the earlier part of this chapter to the compound nature of the state of mind which we term belief. It is partly intellectual, partly also emotional; it professes to rest upon experience, but in reality the experience acts through the distorting media of hopes and fears and other disturbing agencies. So long as we confine our attention to the state of mind of the person who believes, it appears to me that these two parts of belief are quite inseparable. Indeed, to speak of them as two parts may convey a wrong impression; for though they spring from different sources, they so entirely merge in one result as to produce what might be called an indistinguishable compound. Every kind of inference, whether in probability or not, is liable to be disturbed in this way. A timid man may honestly believe that he will be wounded in a coming battle, when others, with the same experience