In every proposition, then, so far as it is believed, questioned, or disbelieved, four elements are to be distinguished, the subject, the predicate, and their relation (of whatever sort it be)--these form the _object_ of belief--and finally the psychic attitude in which our mind stands towards the proposition taken as a whole--and this is the belief itself.[292] Admitting, then, that this attitude is a state of consciousness _sui generis_, about which nothing more can be said in the way of internal analysis, let us proceed to the second way of studying the subject of belief: _Under what circumstances do we think things real?_ We shall soon see how much matter this gives us to discuss. THE VARIOUS ORDERS OF REALITY. Suppose a new-born mind, entirely blank and waiting for experience to begin. Suppose that it begins in the form of a visual impression (whether faint or vivid is immaterial) of a lighted candle against a dark background, and nothing else, so that whilst this image lasts it constitutes the entire universe known to the mind in question. Suppose, moreover (to simplify the hypothesis), that the candle is only imaginary, and that no 'original' of it is recognized by us psychologists outside. Will this hallucinatory candle be believed in, will it have a real existence for the mind? What possible sense (for that mind) would a suspicion have that the candle was not real? What would doubt or disbelief of it imply? When _we_, the onlooking psychologists, say the candle is unreal, we mean something quite definite, viz., that there is a world known to _us_ which _is_ real, and to which we perceive that the candle does not belong; it belongs exclusively to that individual mind, has no _status_ anywhere else, etc. It exists, to be sure, in a fashion, for it forms the content of that mind's hallucination; but the hallucination itself, though unquestionably it is a sort of existing fact, has no knowledge of _other_ facts; and since those _other_ facts are the realities par _excellence_ for us, and the only things we believe in, the candle is simply outside of our reality and belief altogether. By the hypothesis, however, the _mind which sees the candle_ can spin no such considerations as these about it, for of other facts, actual or possible, it has no inkling whatever. That candle is its all, its absolute. Its entire faculty of attention is absorbed by it. It _is_, it is _that_; it is _there_; no other possible candle, or quality of this candle, no other possible place, or possible object in the place, no alternative, in short, suggests itself as even conceivable; so how can the mind help believing the candle real? The supposition that it might possibly not do so is, under the supposed conditions, unintelligible.[293] This is what Spinoza long ago announced: