DOLMENS IN JAPAN. 593 



link becomes harder to dissect out. It becomes a real puzzle when the 

 color pale-blue is said to have feminine, and blood-red masculine affini- 

 ties. And if I hear a friend describe a certain family as having voices 

 like hlotting-paper, the image, though immediately felt to be apposite, 

 1)affles the utmost powers of analysis. The higher poets all use abrupt 

 epithets, which are alike intimate and remote, and, as Emerson says, 

 sweetly torment us with invitations to their inaccessible homes. 



In these latter instances we must suppose that there is an identical 

 portion in the similar ideas and that it is energetically operative, with- 

 out, however, being sufficiently accentuated in consciousness to stand 

 out per se, attract the attention to itself and be abstracted. We can 

 not even by careful search see the bridge over which we passed from 

 the heart of one representation to that of the next. In some brains, 

 however, this mode of transition it extremely common. It would be 

 one of the most important of physiological discoveries could we assign 

 the mechanical or chemical difference which makes the thoughts of 

 one brain cling close to Pure Contiguity. while those of another shoot 

 about in all the lawless revelry of Similarity. Why in these latter 

 brains action should tend to focalize itself in small spots, while in the 

 others it fills patiently its broad bed, it seems impossible to guess. 

 Whatever the difference may be, it is what separates the man of genius 

 from the prosaic creature of habit and routine thinking. Professor 

 Bain, more profusely and cogently than any one else, has illustrated 

 the truth that the leading fact in what we call genius in every de- 

 partment of life is a high development of the power of Similar Asso- 

 ciation. I therefore refer the reader to his work on the "Study of 

 Character," Chapter XV., and to Chapter II., sections 25 to 45, of the 

 portion entitled " Intellect " of his treatise on " The Senses and the 

 Intellect." 



Into the study of voluntary trains of thought there is no space to 

 enter. The student will find in Hodgson's " Theory of Practice," vol. 

 i., pp. 394-400, the best account with which I am acquainted. Mean- 

 while he will no doubt admit that the promise with which this article 

 set out has been fulfilled, and that the processes of spontaneous asso- 

 ciation have become already a little more intelligible to his mind. 



DOLMENS K^ JAPAN. 



By EDWAED S. MOESE. 



f I THOUGH a large amount of material has been collected and pub- 

 -J- lished regarding the megalithic structures of Europe, their classi- 

 fication is in a somewhat unsatisfactory condition. 



The misery of the systematist has already made itself apparent in 



TOL. XVI. — 38 



