[Footnote A: Not in Bradley's "Logic."]

[Footnote B: This is the substance of the doctrine of 'The Will to
Believe.']




CHAPTER III


WILL IN COGNITION

The new psychology of James was bound to produce a new theory of
knowledge, and though it did not actually explore this problem, it
contained several valuable suggestions upon the subject. For instance,
in a brief passage discussing 'The Relations of Belief and Will,' James
pointed out that belief is essentially an attitude of the will towards
an idea, adding that in order to acquire a belief 'we need only in cold
blood act as if the thing in question were real, and keep acting as if
it were real, and it will infallibly end by growing into such a
connection with our life that it will become real' (ii., p. 321). This
passage is an outline of the doctrine of 'The Will to Believe,' which he
was afterwards to develop so forcibly.

Again, in his last chapter, James criticized the doctrine of Spencer
that all the principles of thought, all its general truths and axioms,
were derived from impressions of the external world. He argued, on the
other hand, that such ways of looking at phenomena must originate in the
mind, and be prior to the experience which confirms them. Without