BOOK I PART III
quillity.
Nature has, therefore, chosen a medium, and
has neither bestowed on every idea of good
and evil the power of actuating the will, nor
yet has entirely excluded them from this influ-
ence. Though an idle fiction has no efficacy, yet
we find by experience, that the ideas of those
objects, which we believe either are or will be
existent, produce in a lesser degree the same
effect with those impressions, which are imme-
diately present to the senses and perception.
The effect, then, of belief is to raise up a simple
idea to an equality with our impressions, and
bestow on it a like influence on the passions.
This effect it can only have by making an idea
approach an impression in force and vivacity.
For as the different degrees of force make all
the original difference betwixt an impression