any other manner already l)ecome an o])ject of 8e])arate
acquaintance on our part, so that wo have an imago of it.
250 P8YCH0L00Y.
distinct or vague, in our mind, disconnected with bcd^
then that constituent a may he analyzed out from the total
impression. Analysis of a thing means separate attention
to each of its parts. In Chapter XIII we saw that one
condition of attending to a thing was the formation from
within of a separate image of that thing, which should, as
it were, go out to meet the impression received. Attention
being the condition of analysis, and separate imagination
being the condition of attention, it follows also that sepa-
rate imagination is the condition of analysis. Only such
elements as 2ve are acquainted with, and can imagine
separately, can be discriminated within a total sense-im-
pression. The image seems to welcome its own mate
from out of the compound, and to separate it from the
other constituents; and thus the compound becomes broken
for our consciousness into parts.
All the facts cited in Chapter XIII to prove that attention
involves inward reproduction prove that discrimination
involves it as well. In looking for any object in a room,
for a book in a library, for example, we detect it the more
readily if, in addition to merely knowing its name, etc., we
carry in our mind a distinct image of its appearance. The
assafoedita in ' Worcestershire sauce ' is not obvious to any-
one who has not tasted assafcetida per se. In a ' cold *
color an artist would never be able to analyze out the per-
vasive presence of blue, unless he had previously made
acquaintance with the color blue by itself. All the colors
we actually experience are mixtures. Even the purest
primaries always come to us with some white. Absolutely
pure red or green or violet is never experienced, and so can
never be discerned in the so-called primaries with which
we have to deal: the latter consequently pass for pure.—
The reader will remember how an overtone can only be
attended to in the midst of its consorts in the voice of a
musical instrument, by sounding it previously alone. The
imagination, being then full of it, hears the like of it in
the compound tone.
Non-isolable elements may be discriminated, provided
DISCRIMINATION. 251
their concomiiants change. Very ftnv elements of reality
are exjieiieiiced by us in absolute isolation. The most that
usually happens to a constituent « of a compound piie-
nomenon abed is that its strength relatively to bed varies
from a maximum to a minimum; or that it appears
linked with other qualities, in other compounds, as aefg or
ahih. Either of these vicissitudes in the mode of our
experiencing a may, under favorable circumstances, lead us
to feel the difference between it and its concomitants, and
to single it out— not absolutely, it is true, but approxi-
mately — and so to analyze the compound of which it is a
part. The act of singling out is then called abstraction,
and the element disengaged is an atjstract.
Fluctuation in a quality's intensity is a less efficient aid
to our abstracting of it than variety in the combinations
in which it appears. What is associated noiu with one
thing and now with another tends to become dissociated
from either, and to groiu into ari object of abstract con-
templation by the mind. One might call this the law of
dissociation by varying concomitants. The practical result
of this law IS that a mind which has once dissociated and
abstracted a character by its means can analyze it out of a
total whenever it meets with it again.
Dr. Martineau gives a good example of the law: " When
a red ivory ball, seen for the first time, has been withdrawn,
it will leave a mental representation of itself, in wliich all
that it simultaneously gave us will indistinguishably co-
exist. Let a white ball succeed to it; now, and not efore,
will an attribute detach itself, and the color, by force of
contrast, be shaken out into the foreground. Let the
white ba'i be replaced by an q^^^, and this new dilTcrcncf
will Ijriiig {\\(i form into nf)tice frotii its previous slumber,
and thus that which began by lieing simply an object cut
out from the surrouiuling scene becomes for us first a rec'
object, then a red raiDid object, and so on."
H7///the repetition of the character in combination with
different wholes will cause it thus to break up its adhesion
with any one of theiti. ami roll out, as it were, alone upon
252 PSYCHO LOO Y.
the table of consciousness, is a little of a mystery, but one
which need not be considered here.
Practice improves Discrimination. — Any personal or
practical interest in the results to be obtained by distin-
guishing, makes one's wits amazingly sharp to detect dif-
ferences. And long training and practice in distinguish-
ing has the same effect as personal interest. Both of these
agencies give to small amounts of objective difference the
same effectiveness upon the mind that, under other cir-
cumstances, only large ones would have.
That ' practice makes perfect ' is notorious in the field
of motor accomplishments. But motor accomplishments
depend in part on sensory discrimination. Billiard-play-
ing, rifle-shooting, tight-rope-dancing demand the most
delicate appreciation of minute disparities of sensation, as
well as the power to make accurately graduated muscular
response thereto. In the purely sensorial field we have
the well-known virtuosity displayed by the professional
buyers and testers of various kinds of goods. One man
will distinguish by taste between the upper and the lower
half of a bottle of old Madeira. Another will recognize,
by feeling the flour in a barrel, whether the wheat was
grown in Iowa or Tennessee. The blind deaf-mute, Laura
Bridgman, so improved her touch as to recognize, after a
year's interval, the hand of a person who once had shaken
hers; and her sister in misfortune, Julia Brace, is said to
have been employed in the Hartford Asylum to sort the
linen of its multitudinous inmates, after it came from the
wash, by her wonderfully educated sense of smell.
The fact is so familiar that few, if any, psychologists:
have even recognized it as needing explanation. They
have seemed to think that practice must, in the nature
of things, improve the delicacy of discernment, and have
lei ihe matter rest. At most they have said, " Attention
accounts for it; we attend more to habitual things, and
what we attend to we perceive more minutely." This
answer, though true, is too general; but we can say noth-
ing more about the matter here.
CHAPTER XVI.
ASSOCIATION.
The Order of our Ideas. — After discrimination, associa-
tion I It is obvious that all advance in knowledge must
consist of both operations ; for in the course of our edu-
cation, objects at first appearing as wholes are analyzed
into parts, and objects appearing separately are brought
together and appear as new compound wholes to the mind.
Analvsis and synthesis are thus the incessantly alternat-
ing mental activities, a stroke of the one preparing the
way for a stroke of the other, much as, in walking, a man's
two legs are alternately brought into use, both being indis-
pensable for any orderly advance.
The manner in which trains of imagery and considera-
tion follow each other through our thinking, the restless
flight of one idea before the next, the transitions our minds
make l)etween things wide as the poles asunder, transitions
which at first sight startle us by their abruptness, l)ut
which, when scrutinized closely, often reveal intermeduiting
links of perfect naturalness and propriety — all this magical,
imponderable streaming has from time immemorial excited
the admiration ot all whose attention liapj)ened to be
cauL'ht bv its omnipresent mvsterv. And it has further-
more challenged the race of philosophers to banish some-
thing of the mystery by formulating the process in simj)ler
terms. The proljlcm which the philosophers have set
themselves is that of ascertaining, between tlif thoughts
which thus aj)pear to Kj)rout one out of the ollwv, jiri nn-
ple.s of ronnrrfion wh('rel)y their peculiar suc(!essioii or
coexistence may be explained.
liut immediately an ambiguity arises: which sort of
254 PSYCHOLOOY.
connection is meant ? connection tliouglit-of, or connection
between thoughts f These are two entirely different things,
and only in the case of one of them is there any hope of
finding ' principles.' The jungle of connections thought oj
can never be formulated simply. Every conceivable con-
nection may be thought of — of coexistence, succession, re-
semblance, contrast, contradiction, cause and effect, means
and end, genus and species, part and whole, substance and
property, early and late, large and small, landlord and
tenant, master and servant, — Heaven knows what, for the
list is literally inexhaustible. The only simplification
which could possibly be aimed at would be the reduction
of the relations to a small number of tgpes, like those
which some authors call the 'categories' of the under-
standing. According as we followed one category or an-
other we should sweep, from any object with our thought,
in this way or in that, to others. Were this the sort of con-
nection sought between one moment of our thinking and
another, our chapter might end here. For the only sum-
mary description of these categories is that they are all
thinkable relations, and that the mind proceeds from one
object to another by some intelligible path.
Is it determined by any laws? But as a matter of fact.
What determines the particular path ? Why do we at a
given time and place proceed to think of h if we have just
thought of a, and at another time and place why do we
think, not of h, but of c ? Why do we spend years strain-
ing after a certain scientific or practical problem, but all in
vain — our thought unable to evoke the solacion we desire ?
And why, some day, walking in the street with our atten-
tion miles away from that quest, does the answer saunter
into our minds as carelessly as if it had never been called
for — suggested, possibly, by the flowers on the bonnet of
the lady in front of us, or possibly by nothing that we
can discover ?
The truth must be admitted that thought works under
strange conditions. Pure ' reason ' is only one out of a
ASSOCIATION. 255
thousand possibilities in the thinking of each of us. Who
can count all the silly fancies, the grotesque suppositions,
the utterly irrelevant reflections he makes in the course of
a dav ? Who can swear that his prejudices and irrational
opinions constitute a less bulky part of his mental furni-
ture than his clarified beliefs? And yet, the mode of
genesis of the worthy and the worthless in our thinking
seems the same.
The laws are cerebral laws. There seem to be mechanical
conditions on which thought depends, and ichich, to say
the least, determine the order in ivhich the objects for her
comparisons and selections are presented. It is a sug-
gestive fact that Locke, and many more recent Continental
psychologists, have found themselves obliged to invoke a
mechanical process to account for the aberrations of
thought, the obstructive prepossessions, the frustrations of
reason. This they found in the law of habit, or what we
now call association by contiguity. But it never occurred
to these writers that a process which could go the length of
actually producing some ideas and sequences in the mind
might safely be trusted to produce others too; and that
those habitual associations which further thought may also
come from the same mechanical source as those wiiich
hinder it. Hartley accordingly suggested habit as a sufli-
cient explanation of the sequence of our thoughts, and in
80 doing planted himself squarely upon the properly causal
asjtect of the problem, and sought to treat both ratioiuil
and irrational associations from a single point of view.
ll<nv does a man come, after huving the thought of A,
to have the thought of 15 the next moment? or how does
he come to think A and B always together ? These were
the phenomena which Hartley undertook to explain by
cerebral physiology. I believe that he was, in essential
respects, on the rigiit track, and I propose simply to revise
his conclusions by the aid of distinctions which ho did not
make.
Objects are associated, not ideas, ^\'e hIuiII avoid con-
25(3 rSTCIIOLOQY.
fusion if we consistently speak as if association, so. far as
the word stands for an effect, were between things thought
OF — as if it 'were ihings, not ideas, ivliich are associated
in the mind. We shidl talk of the association of objects,
not of the association of ideas. And so far as association
stands for a cause, it is between processes in the brain^
it is these which, by being associated in certain ways, de-
termine what successive objects shall be thought.
The Elementary Principle. — I shall now try to show that
there is no other elementary causal law of association than
the law of neural habit. All the materials of our thought
are due to the way in which one elementary process of the
cerebral hemispheres tends to excite whatever other ele-
mentary procesii ii may have excited at any former time.
The number of elementary processes at work, however, and
the nature of those which at any time are fully effective in
rousing the others, determine the character of the total
brain-action, and, as a consequence of this, they determine
the object thought of at the time. According as this
resultant object is one thing or another, we call it a pro-
duct of association by. contiguity or oi association by simi-
larity, or contrast, or whatever other sorts we may have
recognized as ultimate. Its productton, however, is, in
each one of these cases, to be explained by a merely quan-
titative variation in the elementary brain-processes mo-
mentarily at work under the law of habit.
My thesis, stated thus briefly, will soon become more
clear; and at the same time certain disturbing factors,
which cooperate with the law of neural habit, will come
to view.
Let us then assume as the basis of all our subsequent
reasoning this law: When two elementary brain-processes
have been active together or in immediate succession, one of
them, on re-occurring, tends to propagate its excitement
into the other.
But, as a matter of fact, every elementary process ha*
unavoidably found itself at different times excited in ecu-
ASSOCIATION. 2c7
junction with manij other processes. Which of these
otliers it shall awaken now becomes a problem. Shall b or
c be aroused next by the ])resent a ? To answer this, we
Duist nuike a further postulate, based on the fact of ten-
sion in nerve-tissue, and on tlie fact of summation of ex-
citements, each incomplete or latent in itself, into an
open resultant (see p. Vli>). The process b, rather tiian c,
will awake, if in addition to the vibrating tract a some
other tract d is in a state of sub-excitement, and formerly
was excited with b alone and not with a. In short, we
may say:
The amount of activity at any given point in the brain-
cortex is the sum of the tendencies of all other points to
discharge into it, such tendencies being j)roportionate (1)
to tlie number of times the excitement of each other point
may have accompanied that of the point in question; (2) t9
the interisity of such excitements; and (3) to the absence of
any rival point functionally disconnected with the first
point, into which the discharges might be diverted.
Expressing the fundamental law in this most compli-
cated way leads to the greatest ultimate simplification.
Let us, for the present, only treat of spontaneous trains of
thought and ideation, such as occur in revery or musing.
The cjise of voluntary thinking toward a certain end shall
come up later.
Spontaneous Trains of Thought. — Take, to fix our ideas,
the two veri^os from * Locksley Hall ':
" J, the heir of all the ageii in the foremost files of time,"
and —
*• For I doubt not through the arjcs one increasing purpose runs."
Why is it that when we recite from memory one of these
lines, and get as far as the ages, that j)ortion of the other
line which follows and, so to speak, sprouts out of the ages
does not also sprout out of our memory and confuse the
Bense of our words? Simply because the word that fol-
lows the ages has its brain-process awakened not eimply by
258 PSYCHOLOGY.
the brain-process of the ages alone, but by it phis the brain
processes of all the words preceding the ages. The word
ages at its moment of strongest activity would, pe?' se, in-
differently discharge into either ' in ' or ' one.' So would
the previous words (whose tension is momentarily much
less strong than that of ages) each of them indifferently
discharge into either of a large number of other words
with which they have been at different times combined.
But when the processes of */, tJie heir of all the ages' si-
multaneously vibrate in the brain, the last one of them in a
maximal, the others in a fading, phase of excitement, then
the strongest line of discharge will be that which they all
aiike tend to take. ' In ' and not ' one ' or any other word
M ill be the next to awaken, for its brain-process has previ-
ously vibrated in unison not only with that of ages, but with
that of all those other words whose activity is dying away.
It is a good case of the effectiveness over thought of what
we called on p. 168 a 'fringe.'
But if some one of these preceding words — * heir/ for
example — had an intensely strong association with some
brain-tracts entirely disjoined in experience from the poem,
of ' Locksley Hall ' — if the reciter, for instance, were trem* -
lously awaiting the opening of a will Avhich might muie
him a millionaire — it is probable that the path of discharge
through the words of the poem would be suddenly inter-
rupted at the word ' heir.' His emotional interest in thai
ivord would be such that its otvn special associations luould
prevail over the combined ones of the other words. He
would, as we say, be abruptly reminded of his personal
situation, and the poem would lapse altogether from his
thoughts.
The writer of these pages has every year to learn the
names of a large number of students who sit in alphabeti-
cal order in a lecture-room. He finally learns to call them
by name, as they sit in their accustomed places. On meet-
ing one in the street, however, early in the year, the face
hardly ever recalls the name, but it may recall the place of
ASSOCIATION. 259
its owner in the lecture-room, his neighbors' faces, and
consequently his general al})habetical position: and then,
usually as the common associate of all these combined
data, the student's name surges up in his mind.
A father M'ishes to show to some guests the progress of
his rather dull child in kindergarten-instruction. Hold-
ing the knife upright on the table, he says, " What do you
call that, my boy?" "I calls it a l-iiife, I does," is the
sturdy reply, from which the child cannot be induced to
swerve by any alteration in the form of question, until the
father, recollecting that in the kindergarten a pencil was
used and not a knife, draws a long one from his pocket,
holds it in the same way, and then gets the wished-for
answer, " I calls it vertical" All the concomitants of the
kindergarten experience had to recombine their effect be*
fere the word ' vertical ' could be reawakened.
Total Recall. — The ideal working of the law of com-
pound association, as Prof. Bain calls it, were it unmodi-
fied by any extraneous influence, would be such as to keep
the mind in a jierpetual treadmill of concrete reminiscences
from which no detail could be omitted. Suppose, for
example, we begin by thinking of a certain dinner-party.
The only thing which all the components of the dinner-
]»arty could combine to recall would be the first concrete
occurrence which ensued upon it. All the details of this
occurrence could in turn only combine to awaken the next
following occurrence, and so on. If a, J>, c, d, e, for in-
stance, be the elementary nerve-tracts excited by the last
act of the dinner-party, call this act A, and /, w, n, o, /> be
those of widking home througli the frosty night, wlii( h we
may c-all H, then the thougbt of A must awaken that of />',
because a, b, c, f/, e will each and all discharge into I
through the paths by which their original discluii'ge took
place. Similarly tliey will discliargo into?/?, n, o, and y;
and these latter tracts will also each reinforce the ollier's
action because, in the exjierience //, they have already
vibrated in unison. The lines in Fig. 57 symbolize tiio
260
FSYUHOLUU y.
summation of discharges into each of the components of
B, and the consequent strength of the combination of
influences by which B in its totality is awakened.
Hamilton first used the word 'redintegration' to desig-
nate all association. Such processes as we have just de-
scribed might in an emphatic sense be termed redintegra-
tions, for they would necessarily lead, if unobstructed, to
the reinstatement in thought of the entire content of large
trains of past experience. From this complete redintegra-
tion there could be no escape save through the irruption of
some new and strong present impression of the senses, or
through the excessive tendency of some one of the elemen-
tary brain-tracts to discharge independently into an aber-
rant quarter of the brain. Such was the tendency of the
Fig. 57.
word 'heir' in the verse from 'Locksley Hall,' which was
our first example. How such tendencies are constituted
w? shall have soon to inquire with some care. Unless they
are present, the panorama of the past, once opened, must
unroll itself with fatal literality to the end, unless some
outward sound, sight, or touch divert the current of
thong'ht.
A^bbUVl^TIOJU. 261
Let us call lliis process impartial redintegraticni, or, still
better, total recall. "Whether it ever occurs in an abso-
lutely complete form is doubtful. We all immediately
recognize, however, that in some minds there is a much
greater tendency than in others for the flow of thought to
take this form. Tliose insutTerably garrulous old women,
those dry and fancilcss beings who spare you no detail,
however petty, of the facts they are recounting, and upon
the thread of whose narrative all the irrelevant items
cluster as pertinaciously as the essential ones, the slaves of
literal fact, the stumblers over the smallest abrupt step in
thoufdit, are figures known to all of us. Comic literature
has made her profit out of them. Juliet's nurse is a
classical example. George Eliot's village characters and
some of Dickens's minor personages supply excellent in-
stances.
Perhaps as successful a rendering as any of this men-
tal type is the character of ]\Iiss Bates in Miss Austen's
' Emma.' Hear how she redintegrates :
"'But where could you hear it?' cried Miss Bates.
* Where could you possibly hear it, Mr. Knightley ? For
it is not five minutes since I received Mrs. Cole's note — no,
it cannot be more than five— or at least ten— for I had got
my bonnet and spencer on, just ready to come out — I was
onlv gone down to speak to Patty again about the pork-
Jane was standing in the passage — were not you, Jane ?—
for my mother was so afraid that we had not any salting-
pan large enough. So I said I would go down and see,
and Jane said : " Shall I go down instead ? for I think you
have a little fold, and Patty has been washing the kitchen."
'M)h, uiv dear," said I— well, and just then came the note.
A Miss Hawkins— that's all I know— a Miss Hawkins, of
Bath. But, Mr. Knightley, how could you possibly have
heard it? for the very moment Mr. Cole told Mrs. Cole of
it, she sat down and wrote to me. A Miss Hawkins '"
Partial Recall. — 'i'his ease helps us to understand why it
ig that the ordinary Kpontaneuus flow of our ideas doea not
2(52 PSTCHOLOOT.
follow the law of total recall. In no revival of a 2)ast ex-
perience are all the items of our tliouglit equally ojjerative
in determining ivhat the next thought shall be. Always
some ingredient is iwe'potent over the rest. Its special sug-
gestions or associations in this case will often be different
from those which it has in common with the whole group
of items; and its tendency to awaken these outlying associ-
ates will deflect the path of our revery. Just as in the
original sensible experience our attention focalized itself
upon a few of the impressions of the scene before us, so