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Belief

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Belief

See Faith.

Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church

BELIEF

In its general and natural sense, denotes a persuasion or an assent of the mind to the truth of any proposition. In this sense belief has no relation to any particular kind of means or arguments, but may be produced by any means whatever: thus we are said to believe our senses, to believe our reason, to believe a witness. Belief, in its more restrained sense, denotes that kind of assent which is grounded only on the authority or testimony of some person. In this sense belief stands opposed to knowledge and science. We do not say that we believe snow is white, but we know it to be so. But when a thing is propounded to us, of which we ourselves have no knowledge, but which appears to us to be true from the testimony given to it by another, this is what we call belief.

See FAITH.

Fuente: Theological Dictionary

belief

The accepting of something as true on the word of another (God or man); the religious doctrines of a particular church or sect, e.g., Catholic belief or creed, Protestant belief or creed.

Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary

Belief

(be and lyian, to hold dear).

That state of the mind by which it assents to propositions, not by reason of their intrinsic evidence, but because of authority. Though the term is commonly used in ordinary language, as well as in much philosophical writing, to cover a great many states of mind, the quasi-definition advanced is probably the best calculated to differentiate belief from all other forms of mental assent. In framing it, respect is paid to the motive of the assent rather than to its nature; for, since intellectual assent is of its nature simple and indivisible, no differentiae proximae can be assigned by which it could be separated into various species. As the objects of belief, also, are of a nature similar to those of knowledge, opinion, and doubt, so, again, no criterion of division can be found in them (as in the case of the objects of separate faculties) to distinguish it from other mental states. St. Thomas Aquinas qualifies his definition of faith with the addition of the note of certainty (Summa, I-II, Q. i,a.4). Though he treats of faith as a theological virtue in the article cited, his words may well be extended to include belief as a purely natural state of the mind. It will thus be seen to cover intellectual assent to truths accepted on authority either human or Divine. In the former case belief may be designated by the synonym credence; in the latter the more usual term is faith. Often, also, belief is used in the sense of fiducia, or trust; and this especially in Protestant theology as a substitute for faith. By the definition given above we are enabled to distinguish belief from intelligence, in that the truth of the fact or proposition believed is not seen intuitively; from science or knowledge, since there is no question of resolving it into its first principles; from doubt, because belief is an assent and positive; from opinion and conjecture, in which the assent is not complete. Belief, however, as has already been noted, is often indiscriminatingly used for these and for other states of mind from which for the sake of accuracy it should be as carefully distinguished as is possible. Though we may know a thing and at the same time believe it (as in the case of the existence of God, which is a natural verity as well as a revealed truth), it is in the interest of clearness that we should keep to the distinction drawn and not confound belief and knowledge, because of the fact that the same truth may simultaneously be the object of both. But there is another very general use of the term belief in which it is taken to designate assent complete enough to exclude any practical doubt and yet distinguishable from the assent of knowledge. In this use no account is taken of authority. We have many convictions resting upon evidence that is not sufficiently clearly presented to our mind to enable us to say we know, but abundantly sufficient for us to produce a practically unqualified assent. While this would seem to fall under the Scholastic head of opinion, it is the point about which has turned the controversy that has been waged since David Hume brought the question into prominence upon the philosophic issue. Briefly, to select a certain number of typical writers for examination, the issues involved are these. How far do we believe–in the sense of trusting our natural faculties in their reports and judgments; and in how far can we be said to know? Hume, in accordance with his sensistic principles, would restrict our knowledge to purely ideal truths. We are capable of knowing, according to the Scotch sceptic, such ideal principles as those of mathematics, together with the conclusions that are derived from them. But our attribution of an objective reality to what we imagine to be the causes of sensations is a belief. So also are such judgments as that of the principle of causality. We cannot be said to know, but to believe, that there is actually such a relation as that of effect to cause. We believe this, and other similar truths, because of a peculiar character of vivacity, solidity, firmness, or steadiness attaching to our conceptions of them. The division is an arbitrary one and the explanation offered as to the nature of belief unsatisfactory and insufficient. Similarly, James Mill would have the assent given to the objective reality of beings a belief. With him the occasion of the belief is the association of ideas; or, rather, as he wrongly states it, the association of ideas is the belief. If belief is a state of mind at all, it can scarcely be described as an association of ideas. Such an association could at most be considered as a cause of the belief. John Stuart Mill in his note to his father’s Analysis, makes belief a primitive fact. It is impossible to analyze it. Locke, though he deals at length with belief, does not try to analyze it or do more than assign objects to it and investigate the grounds of credibility. Alexander Bain originally held belief to be a function of the will rather than a state of the intellect. In his opinion it was the development of the will under the pursuit of immediate ends. Later he modified this opinion, and, while retaining the essentially volitional and emotional character, or tendency, as causes, relegated the act of belief itself to the intellectual part of man’s nature. Father Masher, S.J., whose admirable treatment of the whole subject ought to be consulted, advances an acute criticism of Dr. Bain’s position. He points out that readiness to act is a test of belief, not the belief itself; that belief is generally not active but characteristically passive; that primitive credulity, which Bain makes a chief factor in belief, involves a vicious circle, explaining, as it does, belief by credulity or believing. A not inconsiderable part of the “Grammar of Assent” is concerned with this subject, though hardly dealing with the problem on the foregoing lines. In his treatment of “Simple Assent”, and especially in sections 4 and 5 of Chapter iv, Par. 1, Cardinal Newman’s view can be found. He calls the notional assent that we give to first principles presumption. We cannot be said to trust our powers of reasoning or memory as faculties, though we may be supposed to have a trust in any one of their particular acts. That external nature exists is a first principle and is founded upon an instinct. The use of the term is justified by the consideration that the brute creation also possesses it. Further, “the belief in causation” is one of these presumption the assent to it notional. But, on the other hand, “we believe without any doubt that we exist; that we have an individual and identity all our own;. . .that we have a present sense of good and evil, of a right and a wrong. . .” Again: “Assent on reasonings not demonstrative is too widely recognized an act to be irrational, unless man’s nature is irrational, too familiar to the prudent and clear minded to be an infirmity or an extravagance.” It will be noted that Newman justifies belief as an assent because based on a common use of the rational faculty. Demonstrative grounds may be lacking, but the conviction is none the less neither an infirmity nor an extravagance, but rational. He groups belief and knowledge together under the heading of presumption without drawing any hard and fast line between them. And indeed, from the point of view of mere assent, there is nothing psychological by which they are to be distinguished: since assent itself, as has been noted, is a simple and ultimate fact. The difference lies elsewhere. In this broader sense of belief, it is to be found in the antecedent cause of the assent. For knowledge there will be explicit, for belief implicit, intuition or evidence. Of German philosophers who have treated this topic, Germar, Fechner, and Ulrici may be consulted. The first limits belief to a conscious assent arising from fact; that is, an assent given without consciousness of its causes or grounds. In the case where the causes or grounds become actual factors in the consciousness, the belief rises to the dignity of knowledge. Kant’s view naturally has belief as the necessitated result of the practical reason. It is to be considered epistemologically rather than psychologically. We believe in such truths as are necessitated by the exigencies of our moral nature. And these truths have necessary validity on account of the requirements of that moral nature. We need motives upon which to act. Such beliefs are practical and lead to action. All natural truths that we accept on belief might conceivably be accepted as truths of knowledge. The implicit may unfold and become explicit. This frequently happens in ordinary experience. Evidence may be adduced to prove assertions. Similarly, any truth of knowledge may be accepted as belief. What is said to be known to one individual may be, and often is, accepted upon his testimony by another.

A great variety of factors may play their part in the genesis of belief. We are accustomed to assent to propositions that we cannot be said to know, on account of many different causes. Some of them are often inadequate and even frivolous. We frequently discover that our beliefs rest on no stable foundation, that they must be reconstructed or done away with altogether. The ordinary reasons upon which belief may be based can be reduced to two: testimony and the partial evidence of reason. A third class of causes of belief is sometimes added. Feeling, desire, and the wish to believe have been noted as antecedent causes of the act of assent. But that feeling, desire, or the wish to believe is a direct antecedent is open to discussion. It cannot be denied that many so-called beliefs, more properly described, perhaps, as trust or hope, have their immediate origin in feelings or wishes; but, as a rule, they seem not to be capable of bearing any real strain; whereas we are accustomed to consider that belief is one of the most unchangeable of mental states. Where these antecedents work indirectly through the election of the will, to which reference is made below, belief may issue as a firm and certain assent.

(1) Testimony is a valid and satisfactory cause of assent provided it possess the necessary note of authority, which is the sole direct antecedent of the ensuing belief. Our ultimate witness must know his facts or truths and be veracious in his presentation of them. Intermediated witnesses must have accurately preserved the form of the original testimony. In the case of human testimony the ordinary rules of prudence will naturally be applied before giving credence to its statements. Once, however, the question of knowledge and veracity is settled, belief may validly issue and an assent be given as to a certainty. Of course there is room also for doubt or for opinion, as the credentials of the authority itself may very almost indefinitely. But there is a further class of truths believed upon testimony that does not fall within the scope of natural investigation and inquiry. The supersensible, supraintellectual truths of revelation, at any rate in the present state of man’s existence, cannot be said to be assented to either on account of an intuition of their nature or because of any strict process of demonstration of their validity. They are netigher evident in themselves nor in their principles. The assent to such truths is of the same nature as that given to truths believed naturally. Only here the authority motivating it is not human but Divine. Acts of assent on such authority are known as acts of faith and, theologically speaking, connote the assistance of grace. They are, none the less, intellectual acts, in the eliciting of which the will has its part to play, just as are those in which assent is given to the authoritative utterances of credible human witnesses. With regard to the nature of this authority upon which such supernatural truths are assented to in faith, it is sufficient to indicate that God’s knowledge is infinite and His veracity absolute.

(2) The partial evidence of reason has already been touched upon. It may be note, however, that the evidence may be relative either relatively or absolutely. In the first case we may have recourse to the authority of those who know for our belief or base it for ourselves upon such evidence as is forthcoming. In the second, as is the case with much of the teaching of science and philosophy, the whole human race can have no more than a strictly so-called belief in it. Probable opinions, conjectures, obscured or partially recalled memories, or any truths or facts of which we have not a consciously evidential grasp, are the main objects of a belief resultant upon partial evidence. In this its distinction from knowledge lies. We are said to know intuitional truths as well as all those that are indirectly evident intheir principles. We know all facts and truths of our own personal experience, whether of consciousness or of objective nature. Similarly, we know the truth of the reports of memory that come clearly and distinctly into into consciousness. Nor is it necessary, with Hamilton, to have recourse to an initial belief or trust as implied in all knowledge. We cannot properly be said to trust our faculties. We do not believe evident truth.

(3) With the two immediate causes of belief already noted, the action of the will must also be alluded to. Under this head emotion, feeling, and desire may conveniently be grouped, since they play an important, though indirect, part in motiving assents through the election of the will and so causing belief. The action of the will referred to is observed especially in a selection of the data to be examined and approved by the intellect. Where there are several sets of evidences or partial arguments, for and against, the will is said to cause belief in the sense of directing the intellect to examine the particular set of evidences or arguments in favour of the resultant assent and to neglect all that might be urged against it. In this case, however, the belief can easily be referred tot he partial evidence of reason, in that as a rational, rather than a volitional act, it is due to the actual considerations beore the mind. Whether these are voluntarily restricted or incomplete from the very nature of the case, does not alter the fact that the assent is given because of the partial evidence they furnish. In faith the meritorious nature of the act of belief is referred to this elective action of the will.

The effects of belief may be summed up generally under the head of action or movement, though all beliefs are not of their nature operative. Indeed, it would seem to depend more on the nature of the content of the belief than upon the act of believing. As with certain truths of knowledge, there are beliefs that leave us unmoved and even tend to restrict and prevent rather than instigate to action. The distinction drawn between the assents of knowledge and belief cannot be said to be observed at all closely in practice, where they are frequently confused. It is none the less undoubtedly felt to exist, and, upon analysis of the antecedents, the one can readily be distinguished from the other. It is found that most o the practical affairs of ordinary life depend entirely upon beliefs. In the vast majority of cases in which action is called for it is impossible to have striclty so-called knowledge upon which to act. In such cases belief readily supplies its place, growing stronger as it is justified by the event. Without it, as a practical incentive to action and a justification of it, social intercourse would be an impossibility. Such things as our estimates of the character of our friends, of the probity of those with whom we transact business, are examples of the beliefs that play so large and so necessary a part in our lives. In their own subject-matter they are on a par with the reasonable beliefs of science and philosophy–founded, as are hypotheses and theories, upon practically sufficient, yet indemonstrative and incomplete data.

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MAHER, Psychology in Stonyhurst Series (London, 1890); NEWMAN, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (London, 1870); BAIN, Mental and Moral Science (London, 1868-72); MILL, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (London, 1829); J.S. MILL, Notes to new edition of The Analysis (London, 1869); IDEM, Dissertations and Discussions (London, 1859-75); SULLY, Sensationa nd Intuition: Studies in Psychology and Aesthetics (London, 1874)); JAMES, The Principles of Psychology (New York, 1890); BALFOUR, A Defence of Philosophic Doubt (London, 1879); WARD, The Wish to Believe (London, 1885); ULRICI, Glauben und Wissen, Spekulation und exacte Wissenschaft (Leipzig, 1858); FECHNER, Die drei Movive und Grunde des Glaubens (Leipzig, 1863); BALDWIN, Dict. Of Philosophy, s.v.

FRANCIS AVELING Typed by Dorothy E. Moloney Dedicated to Greg, that he might gain the gift of faith

Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia

Belief

BELIEF.Belief is the mental action, condition, or habit of trusting in or confiding in a person or a thing. Trust, confidence, reliance, dependence, faith are from this point of view aspects of belief. More narrowly considered, belief is the mental acceptance of a proposition, statement, or fact on the testimony of another, or on the ground of authority. The fact may be beyond our observation, or the statement beyond our powers of verification, yet we may believe that Britain is an island though we may never have sailed round it, and we may believe in the law of gravitation though we may not be able to follow the reasoning which proves it.

This is not the place to deal with all the phases or aspects of belief, or to trace the history of opinion on the question. It is an interesting chapter in the history of human thought, and it is of the highest importance in its practical reference. But we may only indicate the main outline of it in both respects. The contributions towards the right understanding of the province and character of belief in more recent years have been of great value. Recent psychology has become aware of the magnitude and complexity of the problem, and in the hands of such writers as Bain, James, Stout, Baldwin, and others it has received a treatment which may be described as adequate. Nor should we omit the name of Dr. James Ward, whose work in this relation is of the highest merit. These have endeavoured to mark off the field of belief, and to distinguish it from other mental states. Is it active or passive? Is it a state of mind which belongs to the sphere of feeling? or is it a state of mind which belongs to intelligence? or is it something which belongs to the sphere of action? and is it a result of the will to believe? Weighty names may be adduced in favour of each of these views. But before the question is asked to what sphere of human nature belief is to be assigned, there is a previous question to be settled. Are we to give the name of belief to every mental state which relates to an object? Is every state of consciousness which arises in response to a stimulus and in relation to an object to be described as a state of belief? Can we say we believe in our sensations as we say we believe in our reasoned conclusions? The state of the question may be set forth most vividly in two characteristic descriptions of the nature of belief. Hume says: A belief may be most accurately described as a lively idea related to or associated with a present impression. Professor Stout says: All belief involves objective control of subjective activity (Manual of Psychology, ii. 544).

According to Hume, an opinion or belief is nothing but an idea that is different from a fiction, not in the nature or in the order of its parts, but in the manner of its being conceived. But when I would explain this manner, I scarce find any word that fully answers the case, but am obliged to have recourse to every ones feeling, in order to give him a perfect notion of this operation of the mind. An idea assented to feels different from a fictitious idea that the fancy presents to us; and this feeling I endeavour to explain by calling it a superior force, or vivacity, or solidity or firmness, or steadiness (Humes Works, i. 397 f., Greens ed.). The description of belief given by Hume is distinguished by the absence of that objective control of subjective activity which, according to Professor Stout, is the mark of all belief. A closer examination of Humes statement enables us to see that the superior force or vivacity of a belief is due not merely to the manner of conceiving it, but to a certain coerciveness which fact has and which a fancy has not. The feeling of belief is not a gratuitous addition made by the mind to the experience, it is dictated by the fact itself.

Without entering into the discussion in any detail, it is sufficient for the present purpose to say that all belief in the first place is teleological, that it is the tendency of the mind to make itself at home in the world in which it has to live. This general description includes the nave uncritical belief of the child, and the reasoned critical belief of the mature man. In its simplicity it is a postulate. It may be almost called an instinct, an expectation that the world will afford to man a place in which to live and grow and work. Be the origin and character of instinct what they may, be they due to original endowment or to the accumulated and transmitted inheritance of the race, yet the instincts are there, and are of a kind to enable life to act before individual experience has had time to work. Our organic nature is related to its environment, and it postulates an environment with which it can interact. Thus all our organic instincts which find expression in appropriate acts, such as sucking, eating, moving our limbs in response to a stimulus, and so on, are called into action on the presentation of their appropriate objects. Action begets belief, and belief is again the mental situation which leads to further action. At the outset belief is dominated by our practical needs. In truth, the new school of Humanism holds that all activities whatsoever are in the interest of the practical needs of man, and by the emphasis it has laid on this aspect it has called attention to a factor of human experience which has been too much neglected. For there is no doubt that the character of belief is to be explained, in the first place at all events, from its function in relation to the practical needs of man. And all through the experience of man, belief is an expression of human need, and is the demand which a living creature makes on the Universe for a place to live in, to grow in, and to furnish itself with what shall satisfy its need. Thus the initial postulate of belief is that it is in a world in which it may make itself at home, and the final demand of belief in developed humanity is that it shall find itself in a rational, intelligible world, in which its ideals of unity, intelligibility, beauty, and worth may and will find their realization.

Our beliefs, then, in their generality are our postulates. They set forth our expectations, our desires, our wishes. They proceed on the assumption that our needs are related to reality, and that reality has a way of satisfying our needs. In all belief there is, of course, a certain risk. We may mistake our real needs, and we may make mistakes as to the nature of reality. But the postulate is there notwithstanding. In fact, to believe that a thing exists is to act as if it existed. To believe that the properties of a thing are so and so, is to act on that supposition. Thus, apart from any theory, we all postulate a kind of uniformity of nature.

From this point of view all axioms are postulates. They are unavoidable assumptions. Students of science are familiar with these. We do not at present raise the question whether the universal formulae of science are more than postulates. They are postulates, and are demands which our nature makes on the Universe.

Our postulates, however, may mislead; they may be unwarrantable, and not unavoidable. Along, therefore, with the predisposition to believe in the reality and modes of being of the objects of experience, there goes the necessity of verification, criticism, and investigation. For postulates may be too readily made. Passing needs may be taken for permanent, and beliefs may be based on wrong impressions. Subjective hopes or fears may objectify their objects, and attribute reality to objects which have none. Thus we have beliefs which are irresistible and unavoidable. They are absolutely based in the constitution of the mind itself, and are the assumptions without which experience is impossible. Students of Kant will readily recognize them. They lie at the basis of our life and activity, they are acted on before we are conscious of them, and when they arise into clear consciousness we recognize that they are unavoidable and inevitable. In like manner there are other principles arising out of our intercourse with the external world which strike us as inevitable and unavoidable. To enumerate these would lead us too far afield.

Between the necessary and universal beliefs on the one hand, and the practical necessity which coerces our beliefs on the other hand, there lies a wide field of beliefs, the validity of which depends on our ability to sift, examine, and criticise them. The process of sifting and criticism is coextensive with experience. Man is ever sifting his beliefs, is ever criticising them, and is, more or less, successfully active in the endeavour to make them correspond with reality as he is able to apprehend and conceive reality. He ventures in the belief that there is a correspondence between his inward nature and the world in which he lives; he believes that there is a constancy in things, that the qualities of things will remain constant. He makes the venture, and the venture is justified, and his faith increases as his expectation is verified. Beginning with the need to live and to make himself at home in the world, going on to satisfy his dominant and controlling need to obtain some mastery of the world, he reaches the time when he pursues knowledge for its own sake, and, in a disinterested manner, seeks to obtain a consistent and complete view of the scheme of things. So the sciences, the philosophies, the poesies of the world arise, and all the manifold works of the human spirit.

The beliefs of man can, as we see, be looked at as movements of the human spirit arising out of his intercourse with the world in which he lives. Our account of the matter would be most imperfect were we to confine our attention to man considered only as an individual. Belief is largely a social product. The working beliefs of the civilized man are largely due to inheritance. Without entering on the mysterious question of heredity, and without inquiry into the amount or quality of our organic inheritance, there is no doubt that a large proportion of our working beliefs arise out of our social environment, and out of the intellectual, moral, and spiritual atmosphere of the society around us. The language we learn to speak is the registration of the beliefs of those who made and used it; it tells the meaning which men found in the world and in their own life. It throbs with the life of all the past, is directive of the life of the present and the future. We learn the meanings as we learn to speak, and the meanings of those who speak to us become our meanings. Our beliefs and our meanings belong together. And ere we know it, we are furnished with a working body of beliefs which mainly represent the experience of our ancestors. As we speak with the accent of the family and the district, as our voices repeat the swing and cadence of the sentence, so we take over also the beliefs which sway the minds of those with whom we live. It is a mixed inheritance which we receive and actively appropriate. Beliefs unsifted, uncriticized, results of prejudice often, often of superstition, form part of the inheritance we receive. And the mind assents readily enough to the strange amalgam. For behind the beliefs are the trust which the young have in the old, and the natural homage which they yield to experience.

The persistence of beliefs from age to age is itself a proof that they have a certain correspondence with reality. As all belief is a venture and a risk, failure to realize an expectation is a questioning of its validity, and gives occasion for inquiry. Thus belief is always under the criticism of reality, and the stress of circumstance and the strain of living compel us to revise our beliefs and strive to make them correspond with the facts. It is a process that never ends; and as experience widens and knowledge grows, the circle of our beliefs may contract in one direction and expand in another. Beliefs may take the rank of universal and necessary convictions, or they may be classed as merely probable, or may sink to the level of bare possibility. Our postulates may pass into the region of certainty, or may have to be abandoned as mere possibilities.

Looking at the matter from a historical point of view, perhaps the most striking factor in the genesis and growth of belief is that of trust in a person. Into this state of mind many elements enter. The earliest manifestation of belief among human beings is that which we call Animism, or the belief that all things have an inward life, and have their own nature and activity. A spirit dwells in all objects, whether it is in them originally, or has been put into them by some process or act. Crude as this belief is, it yet has in it the germs of growth, and by refinement of its terms and by the removal of its grosser elements it has become the spirit and the meaning of the higher philosophy of to-day. What is the Hegelian conception of the final correspondence of thought and reality, but a higher form of the original belief of man that the world around him, and the objects with which he came into contact, had a thought and meaning in them akin to those which he found in himself? It were an easy task to extend this observation to other philosophies, but space forbids.

Animism itself was a form of belief which came to higher issues in the social intercourse of man with man. The belief which man came to hold as to the animistic character of all objects whatsoever attained to vividness and certainty when applied to his fellow-men. In this sphere there was certainty, for was there not the interchange of influence, of feeling and thought, between himself and his fellows? Mutual help, power of working together, concerted action with friends and against enemies, the need of increased adaptation to the conditions of life, all conspired to raise belief in ones fellow-men to a dominant height. Out of this social co-operation have arisen the sciences, the arts, the philosophies, and especially the institutions of civilized life. But in considering the rise and growth of these achievements of human life, we must always remember that they are the outcome of the striving of conscious beings. This has been so well put by Professor Villa that we quote his statement.

The mainspring of the mental development of the individual and the species thus consists in two contrary forces, on whose equilibrium both individual and social progress depend. Onenamely, imitationis a conservative, the otherinventionis a progressive force. The former corresponds to biological heredity, and is responsible for social and individual habits and instincts; the latter corresponds to the biological law of variations, and finds its highest expression in genius. The naturalistic and positive schools of the nineteenth century were too much inclined to consider social development as a purely natural and unconscious evolution, and omitted accordingly to take these two forces into consideration. Instead of considering social institutions, ideas, and phenomena as spontaneous products of the nameless multitude, modern Psychology rightly considers them the outcome of individual genius, subsequently consolidated, diffused, and preserved for the whole species by imitation. This idea, admirably developed by Tarde, on which Baldwin founds his studies of social Psychology, has transformed the theories which were current with regard to the evolution of the collective mind, which is thus presented in the light of a conscious, and not of an unconscious evolution like that of geological phenomena. Genius, therefore, is not to be understood as a degeneration, a violation of the natural and conservative law of heredity, but as the integrating factor of the latter, expressive of variation, impulse, and motion, as a dynamic force, without which evolution itself would be impossible (Contemporary Psychology, by Guido Villa, English translation p. 256).

Thus the whirligig of time brings about its revenges, and the uniform tradition of history as to the influence of great personalities on the race is being justified by modern Psychology. In this tradition every movement of advance was ascribed to great men. Advances in the practical control of nature, the making of tools, the use of fire, the sowing of grain, and so on, are in the tradition of the race ascribed to individual men. More particularly is this the case with regard to the founders of cities, the makers of laws, the founders or the reformers of religions, and the framers of institutions. The 19th cent. was celebrated for its endeavours to disintegrate great men, to minimize their influence, and to trace great historic movements to a process and not to a person. How much influence this predilection has had on historic criticism we shall not here inquire. But in the light of modern Psychology, perhaps, Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Solon, Lycurgus, and many others may be looked at as real persons, benefactors of the race, whose names represent real forces in the development of humanity. Perhaps modern Psychology may help men to have some real apprehension of Moses, as ancient Psychology had so much to do with his disintegration.

In the sphere of religions belief we have clear and overwhelming evidence of the weight and influence of personality in the shaping of belief, and in the advance of men to clearer thought and purer embodiment of the religious ideals. It has been through the striving, the toil, the agony of great men that the ideals of religion have attained to form and reality. To them it was given to toil for the race, and the vision they saw and the moral and spiritual truth they won became the inheritance of other men, and through them were conserved for the good of the race. Nor is it the fact that the work and influence of great personalities on other persons have been of a narrow and cramping kind. On the contrary, all the religious truth we possess may be traced back to the moral, spiritual, and intellectual insight of great men, just as every great discovery of science is associated with some great historic name. This personal element in our belief is of universal validity. As a matter of fact, only those religions which have had a personal founder have become universal, or at least international. For, after all, personality is our highest category of thought and life.

Belief in great personalities may be historically and scientifically vindicated. They were needed to make the new departure, they were the first to see the vision, they made the discovery, or thought out the truth; but those unfitted to be pioneers may be quite able to think over again what is made plain to them by him who was the first to think out that truth. The insight of a great man may be verified by the experience of other men. In fact, we have daily illustrations of this in our own experience. We use telephones, we drive by means of steam or electricity, we command nature by using the means which others have placed at our disposal, though we may not have the power of making these discoveries. Plato, Aristotle, Kant opened out paths on which the feet of others may safely tread, and we may rise to the height of the vision of Dante, and rejoice in the universality of Shakespeare, though these would have remained undiscovered countries had not those great personalities opened the gates of entrance to us.

Yet the man in the street has something in common with the greatest and the highest. If he cannot initiate he may imitate, and if he cannot make the discovery he may appreciate and act on it when it has been made. For in the long-run the achievements of great men in any sphere, just in proportion to their truth and value, turn out to have elements of permanent value. Though the discoveries of a person, they have no mere personal value. They are objective, and because objective they may become the possession of every man. We have spoken up to this point of the work of great personalities only so far as that work was a help towards the discovery of truth and a help to life. Belief in them, trust in them, is thus far justified. But no great personality answers to the ideal of greatness in all the aspects of greatness. Great men have had their limitations, and greatness from one point of view has been accompanied with littleness in other respects. The leaders of men have had their limitations. Some have been great in action, some in thought, some in invention, some in power of poetic or prophetic vision, and some in other ways. Others have been great in gathering into a system the results of the work of former generations, and have thus marked out the stage to which humanity has come. But the limitations of great men have had their effect, and their achievements may come to hinder and not to help progress. In all spheres of human thought and action this has been true, and the imitative mind of man has striven to live in formulae which have become outworn and effete. There has been also imitation of great men in those aspects of their activity in which they were not good or great. Illustrations of these facts abound, and need not be dwelt on at length.

But trust in personality as one of the greatest forces of human progress and one of the strongest elements in belief is justified notwithstanding. It alone can give the enthusiasm which confronts difficulties, the personal devotion and love which make men willing to live and die for a great cause. The great epochs of human life, the times which stand out in history as full of heroic endeavour, of far-reaching aspiration, and of substantial gain for other ages, have been pre-eminently periods of abounding trust in great ideals; and these ideals appear in all their grandeur as embodied in some great personality. The imitative mind found its ideal embodied in the great man of its time; and was touched as with a flame, and followed on and became greater than it knew. The great personality became for the lesser men the embodiment of the highest ideal they had ever known; and they, so far as they saw it, embodied it in their own action and character, and wrought it so far into the very constitution of humanity. So the vision grew; and as one personality after another revealed to men the possible synthesis of the ideal greatness of a perfect personality, men were educated to perceive what they ought to demand in the ideal of a perfect personality in whom they might completely and absolutely trust.

In the perfect personality in whom man may absolutely trust all kinds of ideals must meet, and be harmonized in a perfect unity. That is the postulate of the nature of man. And each part of mans complex nature makes its own demand and contributes its own share towards the realization of the ideal. Our intelligent nature demands unity and intelligibility in the Universe, and in Him in whom the Universe lives and moves and has its being. Our moral nature demands its ideal of perfect goodness, righteousness, and holiness in order to meet the needs of our moral nature, and to give us scope for the exercise of reverence towards that which is above us, love towards all that helps and sustains us, and benevolence towards all that needs our help. The aesthetic nature furnishes its ideal of perfect beauty and harmony, and demands that reality shall meet this as it meets every other demand. The heart demands goodness and love, and furnishes in its own action the type of what it demands. The Christian belief is that all these ideals meet and are realized in God. It is the business of Theism to show how these ideals are realized in God, and it is the business of the metaphysician, the ethicist, the aestheticist, and the poet to show how the various ideals converge to the one great ideal whom we reverently call God. Our intellectual, ethical, spiritual, artistic, and emotional ideals agree, must agree, if we are to attain to harmony of life and fulness of being. We repeat again that these are our needs, and our needs have their roots in reality, and reality does not disappoint us.

Is there a Personality who can be to all men what some personalities have been to some men and to some nations? Is there one who can be to all nations what the national heroes have been to particular peoples, one who can embody their highest ideals, and who can so react on them as to make them work out these ideals in themselves? That is the claim which history makes for Christ, which Christians make for Him, and which they believe has been verified in human experience by all who have trusted and followed Him. He Himself makes the claim: I am the way, the truth, and the life (Joh 14:6). St. Paul makes it for Him: in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden (Col 2:2). This is not the place to unfold the meaning of the claim of Christ to the reverence and trust of all men, nor to set forth His ability to meet all the needs of our nature and to satisfy all our ideals. It would take many treatises to do that work, instead of one brief article. But the scope of the proof may be indicated. First, as to the demands which our needs make on Christ; and, second, as to His ability to meet them. The main demands of our nature may be summed up in the ideals we have noted above: the demand for unity, the demand for purity, the longing for beauty and harmony, the thirst for love and goodness and fulness of life. The demand for unity, and the belief that unity is there, have led men on towards the conquest of the world,which conquest has embodied itself, so far as it has gone, in the sciences and their practical applications and in the philosophies of the world. The demand for beauty and harmony, and its result in the poetries, arts, and beautiful human constructions, and in increasing appreciations of the beauty of the Universe; the demand for goodness, righteousness, love, which has embodied itself in the ethical and spiritual life of the world, are illustrations of the faith of man in the unity, beauty, goodness, and worth of reality, and his own achievements are tributes to the validity of his faith.

But the needs of man make this claim on the perfect human personality. We need One who can reveal to us what human life ought to be and what it may become. We need One who gathers into Himself all the types of greatness that have ever entered into the thoughts of men; and One who has realized them in His own life and action. But we need to be educated and trained to appreciate the ideal, for it may be, nay, it is, the reversal of many human ideals. Man has often mistaken his real needs, and has also mistaken the ideals which alone can satisfy them. The first must become last and the last first. The intellectual, moral, aesthetic, and religious needs of man have sought satisfaction in the pursuit of false ideals, and have not found it. Yet the needs are real and the search was good, and the satisfaction is attainable. The perfect human Personality reveals to man how to show reverence to what is above man, love to all his equals, and benevolence to all that is subject to him. He has shown it in His own action, and inspires it in those who trust Him.

Belief in Christ is thus the outcome of the deepest needs of mans manifold nature, and the prophecy of their complete satisfaction. It means also that there is a revelation to man of what his real needs are. It means instruction, education, training into a true and adequate apprehension of his own nature and calling. He learns from Christ his own value and worth, and the sphere in which these may be realized. He learns how this supreme Personality has thought about him, cared for him, suffered for him, lives for him, and is ever working and striving in him and for him. Then, too, he learns, as he trusts Christ, what life and conduct ought to be, and he learns that it is possible through union with Christ to live that life and imitate that conduct. For the further development of this part of our theme we have to refer to Christian dogmatics, and specially to the NT documents. We may also refer to the practical experience of the Christian through the Christian centuries, and to what it has felt and accomplished.

As to the ability of Christ to satisfy our needs and meet our ideals, we have just to make the same reference. We are beginning to understand the cosmical significance of Christ. As our knowledge of the primary revelation of God is widened by the patient and triumphant labours of scientific workers through the ages, we find increased validity in the process when we reflect that we are following in the footsteps of Him by whom every thing was made that was made. In Him all things consist, and our faith in the Eternal Logos is confirmed as we trace out the logos of things. Then in the sphere of history we desire a meaning and a unity, we need the belief that a purpose runs through the ages, and we find that of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things; that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, and that there is a ministry of reconciliation in history. Then comes the personal knowledge of Him, in His perfect grace, love, wisdom, power; and the union with Him, till He becomes the atmosphere we breathe, our outlook on life and its possibilities, the source of all our strivings, the goal of all our efforts; and the only true description of it all is that we are in Christ Jesus.

The correspondence is perfect between our needs and their satisfaction in Jesus Christ. Here the subjective is controlled by the objective, and the coercive power of Christ over the belief of those who trust Him is perfect. Much might be said on the educative power of Christ on man as to the true needs of man, and much might be said on the reasonableness of trust in this perfect Personality; but enough has been said to indicate the congruity of this belief with the whole nature of belief in general, and to show that it is the outcome of all the factors which enter into and justify that attitude of the human mind which we call belief. See, further, art. Faith.

Literature.The articles Belief and Psychology in the Encyc. Brit.9 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] ; James, Principles of Psychology; Turner, Knowledge, Belief, and Certitude; Flint, Agnosticism; Royce, The Religious Aspect of Modern. Philosophy; Newman, Grammar of Assent; Bain, Emotions and the Will, and Mental and Moral Science; Villa, Contemporary Psychology. It may be well to refer to Kant in his three great Critiques, and specially to his treatment of Glaube in the Critique of the. Practical Reason. In the works of Sir William Hamilton, Mansel, and Herbert Spencer the reader will find discussions of some value. In truth, the literature which in one form or other deals with the nature and validity of belief is so enormous, that an exhaustive reference is out of the question. But reference ought to be made to Balfours Foundations of Belief and to Kidds Social Evolution, as these books present a somewhat peculiar view of the nature and validity of belief, specially in its relation to knowledge.

As to belief in Christ we need not give any reference, for all the literature of Christianity would be relevant here.

J. Iverach.

Fuente: A Dictionary Of Christ And The Gospels

Belief

BELIEF.Older Eng. (akin to lief and love) for the Lat.-French faith, which displaced it in AV [Note: Authorized Version.] everywhere except in 2Th 2:13. RV [Note: Revised Version.] follows AV [Note: Authorized Version.] except in Rom 10:16 f., where it restores belief, after Tindale, in continuity with believe. Unbelief held its ground as the antonym (Mat 13:58, etc., Rom 3:3 etc.). In modern Eng., faith signifies ethical, belief intellectual, credence: faith, trust in a person; belief, recognition of a fact or truth beyond the sphere of sensible observation or demonstrative proof. See Faith.

G. G. Findlay.

Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible

Belief

Perhaps, nothing is more simple than the act of believing; and yet, perhaps, nothing which hath created more mistakes and misapprehensions. In common life, we all perfectly understand what it is to believe one another: it is only in relation to our belief in God, that we find it difficult. If the servant of some kind and generous master was promised by him a favour, which he knew his master could perform, he would think it a base impeachment of his master’s character for any one to call the promise in question. But when the same kind of reasoning is brought forward concerning God, we overlook the impeachment of the Lord’s veracity, in doubting the assurance of what God hath promised. Now, to apply this to the case in point. God hath promised to the church eternal life; and this life is in his Son. To believe this on the simple word and authority of God, this is to give God the credit of God; and in doing this, we do in fact no more than the servant, as before stated, does to his kind master. The greatness of the promise, and the undeservedness of our hearts; these things have nothing to do in the business. It is the greatness, and honour, and credit of the Promiser, which becomes the only consideration with faith. And to take God at his word, and to trust in his promise as God; this is the whole sum and substance of believing. So that the simple act of faith, after all, is the simplest thing upon earth; for it is only believing “the record which God hath given of his Son.” (1Jn 5:10)

Fuente: The Poor Mans Concordance and Dictionary to the Sacred Scriptures

Belief

be-lef. See FAITH.

Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

Belief

Acquiescence in the existence of objects (e.g. external things, other minds, God, etc.) or assent to the truth of propositions (e.g. scientific, moral, aesthetic, or metaphysical statements). The belief in objects is frequently immediate and non-inferential; the belief in propositions usually rests on reflection and inference.

Theories of belief may be classified as

(a) affective,

(b) intellectual and

Hume’s theory that belief is a feeling of vividness attaching to a perception or memory but not to a fiction of the imagination is an example of (a) (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 5 Pt. II). Bain and James Mill represent (b), while W. James represents (c). (The Will to Believe, Etc., 1896). — L.W.

In scholasticismmeans either faith or opinion. Opinion is a statement lacking evidence. Faith is a supernatural act, due to God’s grace, referring to things reason finds beyond its capacity of proof, though not contradicting its principles. Statements capable of experimental proof are not objects of faith. — R.A.

Fuente: The Dictionary of Philosophy

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