484 PSYCHOLOOY. 



reason of that common observation, — that men who have a great 

 deal of wit and prompt memories liave not always the clearest judg 

 ment or deepest reason. For, wit lying most in the asseml^lage 

 of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety 

 wherein can be found any resemblance or eongruity, thereby to 

 make up pleasant pictures anil agreeable visions in tlie fancy ; 

 judgment, on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating 

 carefully one from another ideas wherein can be found the least 

 difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude and by 

 affinity to take one thing for another. This is a way of proceeding 

 quite contrary to metaphor and allusion, wherein for the most part 

 lies that entertainment and pleasantry of wit which strikes so lively on 

 the fancy, and therefore, so acceptable to all people because its beauty 

 appears at first sight, and there is required no labor of thouglit to ex- 

 amine what truth or reason tliere is in it." * 



But Locke's desceiidaiits have been slow to enter into tlie 

 path whose fruitl'uluess was thus pointed out by their mas- 

 ter, and have so neglected the study of discrimination that 

 one might almost say that the classic English jjsychologists 

 have, as a school, hardly recognized it to exist. 'Associa- 

 tion' has proved itself in their hands the one all-absorbing 

 power of the mind. Dr. Martineau, in his review of Bain, 

 makes some very weighty remarks on this onesidedness of 

 the Lockian school. Our mental history, says he, is, in 

 its view, 



"a perpetual formation of new compounds : and the words 'associ- 

 ation,' 'cohesion,' 'fusion,' ' indissoluble connection,' all express the 

 change from plurality of data to some unity of result. An explanation 

 of the process therefore requires two things : a true enumeration of 

 the primary constituents, and a correct statement of their laws of com- 

 bination : just as, in chemistry, we are furnished with a list of the 

 simple elements, and the with then principles of their synthesis. Now 

 the latter of these two conditions we find satisfied by the association- 

 psychologists : but not the former. They are not agreed upon their 

 catalogue of elements, or the marks l)y which they may know the simple 

 from the compound. The psychologic unit is not fixed ; that wliich is 

 called one impression by Hartley is treated as half-a-dozen or more by 

 Mill : and the tendency of the modern teachers on this point is to recede 

 more and more from the better-chosen track of their master. Hartley, 

 for example, regarded the whole present effect upon us of any single 

 object — say, an orange — as a single sensation ; and the whole vestige 

 it left behind, as a single 'idea of sensation.' His modern disciples, 



* Human Understanding, ii. xi. 1, 2. 



