THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



MARCH, 1880. 



THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 



By WILLIAM JAMES, M. D., 



ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY IN HARVARD COLLEGE. 



THE manner in which trains of imagery and consideration follow 

 each other through our thinking, the restless flight of one idea 

 before the next, the transitions our minds make between things wide 

 as the poles asunder, transitions which at first sight startle us by their 

 abruptness, but which, when scrutinized closely, often reveal interme- 

 diating links of thought of perfect naturalness and propriety — all this 

 magical, imponderable streaming has from time immemorial excited 

 the admiration of every living man whose attention happened to be 

 caught by its omnipresent mystery. And it has furthermore chal- 

 lenged the race of philosophers to try to banish something of the mys- 

 tery by formulating the process in somewhat simpler terms. 



Two great philosophic efforts to this end have been made. The 

 one is called the associationist philosophy of England, the other the 

 Herbartian system of Germany. Professor Bain's books are generally 

 regarded as the most successful expression of the first movement. 

 Volkmann's " Psychology " is perhaps the most finished utterance of 

 the last. These schools differ as to their theoretic basis (the one being 

 ontological and the other phenomenal), but they agree in almost all 

 besides ; especially in the attempt to show how all the different kinds 

 of mental activity (such as memory, judgment, reasoning, self-con- 

 sciousness, desire, etc., etc., which were formerly classed as distinct 

 .and original "faculties") maybe explained as resultants of the man- 

 ner in which, by the working of two or three simple elementary laws 

 of revival between images, these latter are grouped into certain charac- 

 teristic forms. 



In fact, the easiest way of describing the entire industry of these 

 VOL. XVI. — 37 



