98 Rev. James WI.ts on accidental Association. 
relations of things. For the purpose of this present investigation, however, I would 
suggest, that the method thus abused would offer the surest mode of trial; and I 
would freely stake my proposition on its results; it was indeed, but a vicious iso- 
lation of that natural process which is of the most constant and uniform avail. 
Those persons who are much conversant with books, are aware how often the 
recollection of the date, the fact, or even the step of a chain of abstractions, is 
helped by the place of the page. The formule of science afford a similar assis- 
tance to the geometrician. 
I am thus led to a very important consideration, which has a material bearing 
of a more general nature, but can only here be noticed as concerns the immediate 
subject. It is probable that it may be observed how uniformly I have taken my 
examples from the phenomena of vision. 
I believe that the laws of the mind are simple and uniform, and that its main 
elementary processes are equally operative in every class of ideas ; but it is not 
easy to bring the several classes into distinct evidence for the purpose of mere 
exemplification. The present purpose requires the help of those ideas which are 
most uniformly distinct, and of which the coherence can be most easily appre- 
hended without confusion. It would demand more than an essay to fix the 
shadowy transitions and glancing associations of moral sentiment, to the satisfaction 
of any one reflecting person ; and if this were done, it might not be so easy to 
satisfy another; and the difficulty very much consists in this,—the operations 
and processes of the mind are not, like our ideas, directly the object of attention, 
but elementary influences and transitions, of which the result alone is distinctly 
perceived. And, therefore, it is from our distinct ideas, and from those states of 
apprehension in which their coherency can at once be observed, that the most 
available cases can be derived. Of these, ideas of sensation are the most gene- 
rally distinct ; in the work of memory they are, therefore, most used, and those of 
sight most of all. Visible phenomena supply the entire ground of most men’s 
thoughts ; a fact which is to be perceived in the universal structure of language. 
There is scarcely a course in which the mind can be engaged, in which they 
will not afford the main support and guide to thought and action. A little 
reflection may, perhaps, even lead to a statement much less qualified, but scarcely 
less true. The whole structure of our knowledge, the substratum of all our moral 
affections, and the entire substance of most men’s thoughts, is founded in, and 
