vin PRACTICAL JUDGMENT 



a Judgment, on the other hand, both of the related terms in 

 their relation are presented or represented. The case of the 

 Association of Ideas is intermediate. Here the perception 

 does call up an idea, or one idea calls up another, but, as 

 the associative process is generally conceived, the ideas 

 merely succeed one another. They are not held together 

 and formed into new judgments. It was the fundamental 

 error of Hume's psychology an error which also vitiated 

 much of his logic and metaphysics to treat associated 

 ideas, so conceived, as equivalent to a belief in the connec- 

 tion of their contents. To believe that B is the effect of 

 A is not at all the same thing as to have a lively idea of 

 B following upon an idea of A. On the contrary, it consists 

 in grasping the terms A and B together in a determinate 

 relation, and asserting that relation of reality. 



It may be asked whether Association as distinguished 

 from Assimilation on the one hand and Judgment on the 

 other is a real process at all. Is there a stage or a state in 

 which ideas follow one another without being brought 

 into relation ? Thought is continuous not, as the early 

 Associationists seemed to regard it, discrete. Perception 

 passes into idea, and for a space they dwell together. 

 Even in the most dreamy reverie, it may be said, continuity 

 and connection have more to do with the line of thought 

 than u contiguity." But this objection must not be pushed 

 too far. It is harder to keep in mind a jangle of nonsense 

 than a sentence with meaning in it, but it is by no means 

 impossible. 1 The former presence of two elements in one 

 and the same whole of consciousness is often quite sufficient 

 to revive them in grotesque juxtaposition in a train of 

 thought. It is to this that we owe the Miss Bateses 

 and Mrs. Nicklebys of literature and of real life. 



Ideas, then, may be associated without being logically 

 connected. Moreover, even if they were associated so that 

 a logician reflecting upon them could detect and expose the 

 relation, it does not follow that that relation is itself present 

 to the mind as the ideas float past. In a not uncommon 

 experience, the act of " putting two and two together " 

 follows quite clearly and distinctly as a separate act upon 



1 For some measure of the difference in labour, see below, p. 155. 



