ASSOCIATION. 5Q^ 



or they may be successively experienced properties of an 

 object) whicli once gave rise to the successive ' ideas,'a hcde, 

 then no sooner will A impress us again and awaken the 

 a, than hcde will arise as ideas even before B C D E 

 have come in as impressions. In other words, the order oi 

 impressions will the next time be anticipated ; and the men- 

 tal order will so far forth copy the order of the outer 

 world. Any object when met again will make us expect its 

 lormer concomitants, through the overflowing of its brain- 

 tract into the paths which lead to theirs. And all these 

 suggestions will be effects of a material law. 



Where the associations are, as here, of successively ap- 

 pearing things, the distinction I made at the outset of the 

 chapter, between a connection thought of and a connection of 

 thoughts, is unimportant. For the connection thought of is 

 concomitance or succession ; and the connection between 

 the thoughts is just the same. The * objects ' and the 

 ' ideas ' fit into parallel schemes, and may be described in 

 identical language, as contiguous things tending to be 

 thought again together, or contiguous ideas tending to recur 

 together. 



Now were these cases fair samples of all association, the 

 distinction I drew might well be termed a Spitzfindigkeit or 

 piece of pedantic hair-splitting, and be dropped. But as a 

 matter of fact we cannot treat the subject so simj)ly. The 

 same outer object may suggest either of many realities for- 

 merly associated with it — for in the vicissitudes of our outer 

 experience we are constantly liable to meet the same thing 

 in the midst of differing companions — and a jDliilosophy of 

 association that should merely say that it will suggest one 

 of these, or even of that one of them which it has oftenest 

 accompanied, would go but a very short way into the ra- 

 tionale of the subject. This, however, is about as far as 

 most associationists have gone with their ' principle of con- 

 tiguity.' Granted an object. A, they never tell us before- 

 hand which of its associates it ivill suggest ; their wisdom is 

 limited to showing, after it has suggested a second object, 

 that that object was once an associate. They have had to 

 supplement their principle of Contiguity by other princi- 



