The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
506.
In the beginning _images_ how images originate in the mind must be explained. Then _words,_ applied to images. Finally _concepts,_ possible only when there are words--the assembling of several pictures into a whole which is not for the eye but for the ear (word). The small amount of emotion which the "word" generates,--that is, then, which the view of the similar pictures generates, for which one word is used,--this simple emotion is the common factor, the basis of a concept. That weak feelings should all be regarded as alike, _as the same,_ is the fundamental fact. There is therefore a confusion of two very intimately associated feelings in the _ascertainment_ of these feelings;--but who is it that ascertains? _Faith_ is the very first step in every sensual impression: a sort of yea-saying is the _first_ intellectual activity! A "holding-a-thing-to-be-true" is the beginning. It were our business, therefore, to explain how the "holding-of-a-thing-to-be-true" arose! What sensation lies beneath the comment "true"?
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.