ASSOCIATION. 553 



laws of ethics are to those of history. Who but an hegelian 

 historian ever pretended that reason in action was per se a 

 sufficient explanation of the political changes in Europe ? 



There are, then, mechanical conditions on ichich thought 

 depends, and ivhich, to say the least, determine the order in 

 ichich is presented the content or material for her compari- 

 sons, selections, and decisions. It is a suggestive fact that 

 Locke, and many more recent Continental psychologists, 

 have found themselves obliged to invoke a mechanical 

 process to account for the aberrations of thought, the ob- 

 structive prejjrocessions, the frustrations of reason. This 

 they found in the law of habit, or what we now call As- 

 sociation by Contiguity. But it never occurred to these 

 writers that a process which could go the length of actually 

 producing some ideas and sequences in the mind might 

 safely be trusted to produce others too ; and that those 

 habitual associations which further thought may also come 

 from the same mechanical source as those Avhicli hinder it. 

 Hartley accordingly suggested habit as a sufficient explana- 

 tion of all connections of our thoughts, and in so doing 

 planted himself squarely uj^on the properly psychological 

 aspect of the problem of connection, and sought to treat 

 both rational and irrational connections from a single 

 point of view. The problem which he essayed, however 

 lamely, to answer, was that of the connection between our 

 psychic states considered purely as such, regardless of the 

 objective connections of which they might take cognizance. 

 How does a man come, after thinking of A, to think of 

 B the next moment ? or how does he come to think A 

 and B always together ? These were the phenomena which 

 Hartley undertook to explain by cerebral physiology. I 

 believe that he was, in many essential respects, on the 

 right track, and I propose simply to revise his conclusions 

 by the aid of distinctions which he did not make. 



But the whole historic doctrine of psychological asso- 

 ciation is tainted with one huge error — that of the construc- 

 tion of our thoughts out of the compounding of themselves 

 together of immutable and incessantly recurring ' simple 

 ideas.' It is the cohesion of these which the ' principles of 



