[Bain's footnote 103: The case that is most thoroughly opposed to the theory of indissoluble association is our belief in the Uniformity of Nature. Our overweening tendency to anticipate the future from the past is shown prior to all association; the first effect of experience is to abridge and modify a strong primitive urgency. There is, no doubt, a certain stage when association co-operates to justify the believing state. After our headlong instinct has, by a series of reverses, been humbled and toned down, and after we have discovered that the uniformity, at first imposed by the mind upon everything, applies to some things and not to others, we are confirmed by our experience in the cases where the uniformity prevails; and the intellectual growth of association counts for a small part of the believing impetus. Still, the efficacy of experience is perhaps negative rather than positive; it saves, in certain cases, the primitive force of anticipation from the attacks made upon it in the other cases where it is contradicted by the facts. It does not make belief, it conserves a pre-existing belief. (See Note at the end of the chapter.)--_B._] This, however, is a part of our constitution, of so much importance, that it must be scrutinized with more than ordinary minuteness. Our first assertion was, that in every instance of belief, there is indissoluble association of the ideas. We shall confine our examples, for the present, to that case of belief which is more immediately under our examination; belief in the future. I believe, that if I put my finger in the flame of the candle, I shall feel the pain of burning. I believe, that if a stone is dropped in the air, it will fall to the ground. It is evident that in these cases, the belief consists in uniting two events, the antecedent, and the consequent. There are in it, therefore, two ideas, that of the antecedent, and that of the consequent, and the union of those ideas. The previous illustrations have abundantly shewn us, in what manner the two ideas are united by association, and _indissolubly_ united. _These_ ingredients in the belief are all indisputable. That there is any _other_ cannot be shewn. {369} Our second assertion was, that cases of indissoluble association, admitted by all men to be this, and nothing more, are acknowledged as Belief. The facts (which any one may call to recollection), in proof of this assertion, deserve the greatest attention; they shew the mode of investigating some of the most latent combinations of the human mind.