578 INDUCTION. 



of mental phenomena hitherto inexplicable, and in 

 particular some of the fundamental diversities of human 

 character and genius. Our associations being of two 

 sorts, either between synchronous, or between suc- 

 cessive impressions; and the influence of the law 

 which renders associations stronger in proportion to 

 the pleasurable or painful character of the impressions, 

 being felt with peculiar force in the synchronous class 

 of associations; it is remarked by the writer referred 

 to, that in minds of strong organic sensibility syn- 

 chronous associations will be likely to predominate, 

 producing a tendency to conceive things in pictures 

 and in the concrete, clothed in all their attributes and 

 circumstances, a mental habit which is commonly 

 called Imagination, and is one of the peculiarities of 

 the painter and the poet; while persons of more mode- 

 rate susceptibility to pleasure and pain will have a 

 tendency to associate facts chiefly in the order of their 

 succession, and if they possess mental superiority, will 

 addict themselves to history or science rather than to 

 creative art. This interesting speculation the author 

 of the present work has endeavoured, on another 

 occasion, to pursue farther, and to explain, by means 

 of it, the leading peculiarities of the poetical tem- 

 perament. It is at least an example which may 

 serve, instead of many others, to show the extensive 

 scope which exists for deductive investigation in the 

 important and so eminently imperfect Science of 

 Mind. 



7. The copiousness with which I have exempli- 

 fied the discovery and explanation of special laws of 

 phenomena by deduction from simpler and more general 

 ones, was prompted by a desire to characterise clearly, 



