588 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



merchant or an Arabian traveler, think of the produce of the palm ; if 

 an habitual student of history, figures with A. d. or B, c. before them 

 will rise in his mind. If I say bed, bath, morning, his own daily toilet 

 will be invincibly suggested by the combined names of three of its 

 habitual associates. But frequent lines of transition are often set at 

 naught. The sight of C. Goring's "System der kritischen Philoso- 

 phic " has most frequently awakened in me thoughts of the opinions 

 therein propounded. The idea of suicide has never been connected 

 with the volumes. But a moment since, as my eye fell upon them, 

 suicide was the thought that flashed into my mind. Why ? Be- 

 cause but yesterday I received a letter from Leipsic informing me 

 that this philosopher's recent death by drowning was an act of self- 

 destruction. Thoughts tend, then, to awaken their most recent as 

 well as their most habitual associates. This is a matter of notori- 

 ous experience, too notorious, in fact, to need illustration. If we have 

 seen our friend this morning, the mention of his name now recalls 

 the circumstances of that interview, rather than any more remote de- 

 tails concerning him. If Shakespeare's plays are mentioned, and we 

 were last night reading " Richard II.," vestiges of that play rather 

 than of " Hamlet " or " Othello " float through our mind. Excitement 

 of peculiar tracts, or peculiar modes of general excitement in the brain 

 leave a sort of tenderness or exalted sensibility behind them which 

 takes days to die away. As long as it lasts, those tracts or those modes 

 are liable to have their activities awakened by causes which at other 

 times might leave them in repose. Hence, recency in experience is a 

 prime factor in determining revival in thought. 



Vividness in an original experience may also have the same effect 

 as habit or recency in bringing about likelihood of revival. If we 

 have once witnessed an execution, any subsequent conversation or 

 reading about capital punishment will almost certainly suggest images 

 of that particular scene. Thus it is that events lived through only 

 once, and in youth, may come in after-years, by reason of their excit- 

 ing quality or emotional intensity, to serve as types or instances used 

 by our mind to illustrate any and every occurring topic whose interest 

 is most remotely pertinent to theirs. If a man in his boyhood once 

 talked with Napoleon, any mention of great men or historical events, 

 battles or thrones, or the whirligig of fortune, or islands in the ocean, 

 will be apt to draw to his lips the incidents of that one memorable in- 

 terview. If the word tooth now suddenly appears on the page before 

 the reader's eye, there are fifty chances out of a hundred that, if he 

 gives it time to awaken any image, it will be an image of some opera- 

 tion of dentistry in which he has been the sufferer. Daily he has 

 touched his teeth and masticated with them ; this very morning he 

 brushed them, chewed his breakfast and picked them ; but the rarer 

 and remoter associations arise more promptly because they were so 

 much more intense. 



