Rev. James Wits on accidental Association. 97 
is it necessary to suppose this connexion very direct or immediate: an investi- 
gation may consist of many lines of thought, and have many stages of investiga- 
tion ; each of these must offer some continuity of premises and conclusions, which 
reason and judgment may regulate, combine, check, and compare. 
When any one engaged in business has to recur to a past fact, if this 
should not be presented in the regular order of the proceeding, his first step is an 
effort to put his mind into some course of probable suggestion. These are innu- 
merable, but the chief are, perhaps, date and locality. He will try to place him- 
self in the precise circumstances under which he became cognizant of the fact,— 
the day, the place, the page of the book, the persons present, the acts on which 
they were occupied. In the course of such a process he will also apply his reason 
to each as it is called up, and thus obtain new directions or confirmations. 
There is connected with this consideration a curious fact, which is universally 
experienced. I mean the power the mind possesses of re-perusing a past apprehen- 
sion, so as not only to recover it in its original form, but, by altering the direc- 
tion of the attention, to catch features which, while present, were not observed 
distinctly, though they formed a part of the whole idea. We are, for example, 
passed in the street by some friend, without the remotest sense of the fact, 
beyond the vague perception of a moving form ; a hundred yards are traversed, 
and suddenly the same figure returns on the thoughts, and is instantly recognized. 
This, I believe, sometimes occurs to most persons. Again, suppose a person to be 
asked if he met somebody in a crowded assembly ; his thoughts will most likely 
at once revert to the scene, and he will find himself analyzing it as if it were pre- 
sent. 
An application of this principle may be found in the method of artificial 
memory, which, some years ago, was employed for the purpose of education. 
This application is so evident, that I will only remark that it exemplifies the prin- 
ciple in its purest form, and separated from all those adjuncts which usually 
accompany and modify all the main processes of the understanding : it, indeed, 
might be used for experiment. From this consideration may be inferred its hurtful 
character, as an instrument of instruction. The injury thus suggested was two- 
fold ; it separated the exertion of the memory from all the concomitant operations ; 
it made knowledge purely dependent upon association ; and it also substituted one 
class of false associations, for all those which should be taught to arise out of the 
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