And our ultimate appeal--as for example concerning the subject next discussed in this chapter--is, he observes, to an instinctive operation of the mind which obliges us to accept and act upon what we cannot explain. Writing in his own person, Mr. Hume observes, "As nature has taught us the use of our limbs, without giving us the knowledge of the muscles and nerves by which they are actuated, so has she implanted in us an instinct, which carries forward the thought in a correspondent course to that which she has established among external objects; though we are ignorant of those powers and forces on which this regular course and succession of objects totally depends."--_Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding._ Section V., end. Compare footnote [d]. to this chapter, p. 269 _post_. [ad] The word Belief has been used in a variety of senses by modern writers of differing views from Jacobi to Sir. W. Hamilton, from Dr. Newman to Mr. Herbert Spencer. "This word," Mr. Spencer says, "is habitually applied to dicta of consciousness for which no proof can be assigned: both those which are unprovable because they underlie all proof, and those which are unprovable because of the absence of evidence." And again; "we commonly say we 'believe' a thing for which we can assign some preponderating evidence, or concerning which we have received some indefinable impression.... And it is the peculiarity of these beliefs, as contrasted with cognitions, that their connexions with antecedent states of consciousness may be easily severed, instead of being difficult to sever. But unhappily, the word 'belief' is also applied to each of those temporarily or permanently indissoluble connexions in consciousness, for the acceptance of which the only warrant is that it cannot be got rid of.... Thus the two opposite poles of knowledge go under the same name; and by the reverse connotations of this name, as used for the most coherent and least coherent relations of thought, profound misconceptions have been generated." Mr. Spencer made these remarks at separate intervals of time, and has repeated them in 1874 (_Essays_, III. 259-60). It would therefore appear that he thinks little has recently been done to discriminate the significations of so ambiguous a term. This chapter endeavours to investigate a small number of the genus "Beliefs" to which the _differentia_ "Of Reason" has been added by way of distinction. It also attempts to offer a contribution towards the useful work of explaining their specific validity, and if its argument be correct, they constitute a very important definable species of the Genus, carrying with them a persuasion pre-eminently their own. On his page 260, last referred to, Mr. Spencer remarks,--"that the belief which the moral and religious feelings are said to yield of a personal God, is not one of the beliefs which are unprovable because they underlie all proof"--and adds that works on Natural Theology treat that Belief as _inferential_.