Bagehot on Belief

abstract: Anatomizing the nature of belief, Walter Bagehot (1826–77) distinguishes between an emotional state of conviction and an intellectual act of assent . According to Bagehot, the various causes of our nonrational convictions can all be traced back to the vestiges of an undiscriminating childhood impulse to acquiesce before all states of consciousness. I argue that he also regards the intellectual activity of assent as emerging from that same original credulity once it has been chastened by the corrective shocks of experience. I further show that Bagehot's picture of conviction, assent, and our omnivorous original credulity shapes various of his social and political doctrines.