Rev. JAmes WILLs on accidental Association. 89 
tion of the attention, and this special direction is strictly what is recognized as 
the idea present to the mind. This idea is evidently not commensurate with the 
entire state of apprehension, and much perplexity has arisen from not observing 
this fact. However deeply we may suppose the attention to be engaged by any 
thought, any considerable alteration of the surrounding phenomena would still be 
perceived; the most abstruse demonstration in this room would not prevent a 
listener, however absorbed, from noticing the sudden extinction of the lights. 
Some philosophers have imposed on themselves by extreme cases, but these are 
not inconsistent with the present statement, which admits of one portion of the 
whole apprehension growing more distinct, and the rest diminishing indefinitely. 
This distinction is of some importance, as in the class of associations here 
mainly to be considered, the whole state of apprehension at a given moment is to 
be regarded. The operation generally known by the phrase “association of 
ideas,” mainly regards distinct ideas combined by habit. On the contrary, that 
which I am now to consider mainly concerns those transient combinations of 
perception, which nearly every moment varies, and which may very appropriately 
be termed “accidental associations.’ If the former compose a main portion of 
our knowledge, the latter form the groundwork of our recollections, among the 
swift and fleeting changes of our days. The essential character out of which their 
most apparent use arises, is that to which I have mainly pointed your attention,— 
that they have always an essential unity, such, that each state of apprehension, 
however variously compounded, is a single whole, of which every component is, 
therefore, strictly apprehended (so far as it is apprehended), as a part. Such is 
the elementary basis from which all our intellectual operations commence. The 
elementary state of the mind is thus a state of association, which loosely and tran- 
siently embodies the phenomena by which our minds and senses are engaged, 
while reason and attention, by more slow degrees, embody, classify, and compare 
them : thus the tendency to apprehend by wholes, to revert to such wholes, and to 
frame thought into wholes, is to be traced as a common process pervading all the 
intellectual operations. 
If we suppose that a person for the first time enters some locality of remarka- 
ble and peculiar features, and that, just as the peculiar character of the scene 
opens upon his attention, he meets two strangers, the whole so as to be nearly 
simultaneous in effect, we have an example containing the chief elements under 
VOL. XXI. M 
