(_c_) The causes determining belief are reinforced in various ways by feeling and emotion. The agreeableness or disagreeableness of any judgment draws attention to, or diverts it from such a judgment and the evidence for it: except that some disagreeable emotions, especially fear, by a sort of fascination of attention, are favourable to belief in the reality of an imagined evil. They possess the whole mind. (_d_) Every desire fixes attention upon beliefs favourable to it, and upon any evidence favourable to them, and diverts attention from conflicting beliefs and considerations. Thus every desire readily forms about itself a relatively isolated mass of beliefs, which resists comparison and, therefore (as Ribot says),[87] does not recognise the principle of contradiction. Incompatible desires may be cherished without our becoming aware of their incompatibility; or, if the fact obtrudes itself upon us, we repudiate it and turn away. The more immature a mind, again, and the less knowledge it has, the less inhibition of desire is exerted by foresight of consequences that ought to awaken conflicting desires or fears; and the less compassion one has, the less is desire inhibited by its probable consequences to others: therefore, in both cases, the less check there is upon belief. (_e_) Voluntary action in connection with any belief, whether of a rational kind or in the routine of rites and ceremonies, favours that belief: (1) by establishing the idea-circuit of means and end, the end suggesting the means to it, and the thought of means running forward to the end—a circuit that resists interruption: (2) by the general effect of habit and prejudice; for every habit of action or of thought has inertia, and, moreover, it is agreeable, and to break it is disagreeable; so that, again, a relatively isolated system is formed, which resists comparison and criticism. On the influence of desire and of activities for an end depends “the will to believe.” We cannot believe anything by directly willing it; but we can will what to attend to, or what to do, and that determines belief.