THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 583 



In case of some one of these preceding words — " heir," for example 

 — having an intensely strong association with some brain-tracts entire- 

 ly disjoined in experience from the poem of " Locksley Hall " — in case 

 the reciter, for instance, was tremulously awaiting the opening of a will 

 which might make him a millionaire or leave him penniless — it is prob- 

 able that the path of discharge through the words of the poem would 

 be suddenly interrupted at the word " heir." His emotional interest 

 in that word would be such that its own special associations would 

 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 alphabetical order in a lecture- 

 room. On meeting one in the street, early in the year, the face hardly 

 ever recalls the name, but it may recall the place of its owner in the 

 lecture-room, his neighbors' faces, and consequently his general alpha- 

 betical position ; and then, usually as the common associate of all 

 these combined data, the student's name surges up in my mind. 



A father wishes to show to some guests the progress of his rather 

 dull child in Kindergarten instruction. Holding the knife upright on 

 the table, he says, " What do you call that, my boy ? " "I calls it a 

 knife, I does," is the sturdy reply, from which the child can not 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 before the word " vertical " could be reawakened. 



Professor Bain, in his chapters on Compound Association, has treated 

 in a minute and exhaustive way of this type of mental sequence, and 

 what he has done so well need not be here repeated. 



The ideal working of the law of compound association, were it un- 

 modified by any extraneous influence, would be such as to keep the 

 mind in a perpetual treadmill of concrete reminiscences from which 

 no detail could be omitted. Suppose, for example, we begin by think- 

 ing of a certain dinner-party. The only thing which all the com- 

 ponents of the dinner-party 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, h, c, d, e, for instance, be the elemen^r.r^ 

 nerve-tracts excited by the last act of the dinner-party, call this act A, 

 and I, m, n, o, p be those of walking home through the frosty night, 

 which we may call B, then the thought of A must awaken that of B, 

 because a, b, c, d, e, will each and all discharge into I through the 

 paths by which their original discharge took place. Similarly they 

 will discharge into m, ??,, o, and ^:>, and these latter tracts will each re- 



