574 PSYCHOLOGY. 



" In a discourse of our present civil war, what could seem more im- 

 pertinent than to ask (as one did) what was the value of a Koniau 

 penny? Yet the coherence to me was manifest enough. For the 

 thought of the war introduced the thought of the delivering up the 

 King to his enemies; the thought of that brought in the thought of the 

 delivering up of Christ; and that again the thought of the thirty 

 pence, which was the price of that treason: and thence easily followed 

 that malicious question; and all this in a moment of time; for thought 

 is quick."* 



Can we determine, now, when a certain portion of the 

 going thought has, bj dint of its interest, become so pre- 

 potent as to make its own exclusive associates tlie dominant 

 features of the coming thought — can we, I sa}^, determine 

 tvhich of its own associates shall be evoked ? For tliej are 

 many. As Hodgson says : 



" The interesting parts of the decaying object are free to combine 

 again with any objects or parts of objects with which at any time they 

 have been combined before. All the former combinations of these 

 parts may come back into consciousness; one must; but which will?" 



Mr. Hodgson replies : 



" There can be but one answer : that which has been most habitually 

 combined with them before. This new object begins at once to form 

 itself in consciousness, and to group its parts round the part still re- 

 maining from the former object; part after part comes out and arranges 

 itself in its old position ; but scarcely has the process begun, when the 

 original law of interest begins to operate on this new formation, seizes 

 on the interesting parts and impresses them on the attention to the ex- 

 clusion of the rest, and the whole process is repeated again with end- 

 less variety. I venture to propose this as a complete and true account 

 of the whole process of redintegration." 



In restricting the discharge from the interesting item 

 into that channel which is simply most habitual in the sense 

 of most frequent, Hodgson's account is assuredly imperfect. 

 An image by no means always revives its most frequent 

 associate, although frequency is certainly one of the most 

 potent determinants of revival. If I abruptly utter the 

 word swalloic, the reader, if by habit an ornithologist, will 

 think of a bird ; if a physiologist or a medical specialist in 

 throat diseases, he wall think of deglutition. If I say date. 



* Leviathan, pt. i. chap, iir., mit. 



