Bagehot, William (1826-1877)

On the Emotion of Conviction

April, 1871

"Strong convictions gave him a kind of cramp in the will, and he could not act on them."

The explanation of these facts in metaphysical books is very imperfect. Indeed, I only know one school which professes to explain the emotional, as distinguished from the intellectual element in belief. Mr. Bain (after Mr. Mill) speaks very instructively of the "animal nature of belief," but when he comes to trace its cause, his analysis seems, to me at least, utterly unsatisfactory. He says that, "the state of belief is identical with the activity or active disposition of the system at the moment with reference to the thing believed". But in many cases there is firm belief where there is no possibility of action or tendency to it. A girl in a country parsonage will be sure "that Paris never can be taken," or that "Bismarck is a wretch," without being able to act on these ideas or wanting to act on them. Many beliefs, in Coleridge's happy phrase, slumber in the "dormitory of the soul"; they are present to the consciousness, but they incite to no action. And perhaps Coleridge is an example of misformed mind in which not only may "Faith" not produce "works," but in which it had a tendency to prevent works. Strong convictions gave him a kind of cramp in the will, and he could not act on them. And in very many persons much-indulged conviction exhausts the mind with the attached ideas; teases it, and so, when the time of action comes, makes it apt to turn to different, perhaps opposite ideas, and to act on them in preference.

Body::Cramp

Reading

William Bagehot, "On the Emotion of Conviction," from The Contemporary Review vol. 17 (1871): 32-40. <Link to Google Books>

Text from The Liberty Fund

01/23/2018