290 THE EDUCATIONAL CLAIMS OF BOTANY. 



has been formed in this manner, the mental growth is mainly 

 carried forward by new combinations among them. The sim- 

 pler ideas once acquired, the development of intelligence con- 

 sists largely in associating them in new relations and groups 

 of relations. The perception of likeness and difference is the 

 essential work that is going on all the time, but the compari- 

 sons and discriminations are constantly becoming more exten- 

 sive, more minute, and more accurate. A number of elemen- 

 tary ideas thus become, as it were, fused or consolidated into 

 one complex idea ; and, by a still further recognition of like- 

 ness and difference, this is classed with a new group, and this 

 again with still larger clusters of associated ideas. 



The conception of an orange, for example, is compounded 

 of the elementary notions of color, form, size, roughness, re- 

 sistance, weight, odor, and taste. These elements are all 

 bound up in one complex idea. The idea of an apple, a pear, a 

 peach, or a plum, is in each case made up of a different group 

 of component ideas, while the notion of a basket of different 

 fruits is a cluster of these groups of still higher complexity, 

 but still represented in thought as one complex idea, the ele- 

 ments of which are united by the relations of contrast and 

 resemblance. Or, again, the child may begin with a large, 

 vague idea, as a tree, for example, and then, as intelligence 

 concerning it progresses, he decomposes it into its component 

 ideas, as trunk, branches, leaves, roots, and these into still mi- 

 nuter parts. There is a growing mental heterogeneity through 

 the increasing perception of likeness and difference. Thus, as 

 soon as ideas are formed, they begin to be used over and over, 

 and this process is ever continued.* An old idea in a new re- 

 lation or grouping has a new meaning becomes a new fact or 



* Our reason consists in using an old fact in new circumstances, through 

 the power of discerning the agreement ; this is a vast saving of the labor of 

 acquisition ; a reduction of the number of original growths requisite for oar 

 education. When we have any thing new to learn, as a new piece of music, 

 or a new proposition in Euclid, we fall back upon our previously-formed com- 

 binations, musical or geometrical, so far as they will apply, and merely tack 

 certain of them together in correspondence with the new case. The method 

 of acquiring by patch-work sets in early, and predominates increasingly. 

 Bain. 



