ASSOCIATION. 569 



anj alteration in the form of question, until the father 

 recollecting that in the Kindergarten a pencil was used, and 

 not a knife, draws a long one from his pocket, holds it in 

 the same way, and then gets the wished-f or answer, " I calls 

 it vertical.''^ AH the concomitants of the Kindergarten ex- 

 perience had to recombine their effect before the word 

 ' vertical ' could be reawakened. 



Professor Bain, in his chapters on ' Compound Associa- 

 tion,' has treated in a minute and exhaustive way of this 

 type of mental sequence, and what he has done so well 

 need not be here repeated.* 



Impartial Redintegration. 



The ideal working of the law of compound association, 

 were it unmodified by any extraneous influence, would be 

 such as to keep the mind in a perpetual treadmill of con- 

 crete reminiscences from which no detail could be omitted. 

 Suppose, for examj^le, we begin by thinking of a certain 

 dinner-party. The only thing which all the components of 

 the dinner-party could combine to recall would be the first 

 concrete occurrence which ensued upon it. All the details 

 of this occurrence could in turn only combine to awaken the 

 next following occurrence, and so on. If a, b, c, d, e, for in- 

 stance, be the elementary nerve-tracts excited by the last 

 act of the dinner-j^arty, call this act A, and I, m, n, o, p be 

 those of walking home through the frosty night, which we 

 may call B, then the thought of A must awaken that of B, 

 because a, h, c, d, e, will each and all discharge into I 

 through the paths by which their original discharge took 

 place. Similarly they will discharge into m, n, o, and p ; 

 and these latter tracts will also each reinforce the other's 

 action because- in the experience B, they have already 

 vibrated in unison. The lines in Fig. 40, p. 570, symbolize 

 the summation of discharges into each of the comf)onents 

 of B, and the consequent strength of the combination of 

 influences by which B in its totality is awakened. 



Hamilton first used the word ' redintegration ' to desig- 

 nate all association. Such processes as we have just de- 



*I strongly advise the student to read his Senses and Intellect, pp. 544- 

 556. 



