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 dinner. 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 but calmer judgments, see that the chance is too small to deserve consideration. But such a man's belief, if we look only to that, will not differ in its nature from sound belief. His conduct also in consequence of his belief will by itself afford no ground of discrimination; he will make his will as sincerely as a man who is unmistakeably on his death-bed. The only resource is to check and correct his belief by appealing to past and current experience.[7] This was advanced as an objection to the theory on which probability is regarded as concerned primarily with laws of belief. But on the view taken in this Essay in which we are supposed to be concerned with laws of inference about things, error and difficulty from this source vanish. Let us bear clearly in mind that we are concerned with inferences about things, and whatever there may be in belief which does not depend on experience will disappear from notice.