682 I'SYCIIOLOGY. 



attempt to trace them out. From an instance like the above, 

 where the pivot of the Similar Association was formed by 

 SL detiuite concrete word, train, to those where it is so subtile 

 as utterly to elude our analysis, the passage is unbroken. 

 We can form a series of examples. Wlien Mr. Bagehot says 

 that the mind of the savage, so far from being in a state of 

 nature, is tattooed all over with monstrous superstitions, 

 the case is very like the one we have just been considering. 

 When Sir James Stephen compares our belief in the uni- 

 formity of nature, the congruity of the future with the past, 

 to a man rowing one way and looking another, and steering 

 his boat by keeping her stern in a line with an object behind 

 Mm, the operative link becomes harder to dissect out. It 

 is subtler still in Dr. Holmes's phrase, that stories in pass- 

 ing from mouth to mouth make a great deal of lee-way in 

 proportion to their headway ; or in Mr. Lowell's descrip- 

 tion of German sentences, that they have a way of yawing 

 and going stern-foremost and not minding the helm for sev- 

 eral minutes after it has been put down. And finally, it is 

 a, real puzzle when the color pale-blue is said to have femi- 

 nine and blood-red masculine affinities. And if I hear a 

 friend describe a certain family as having hlotting-paper 

 voices, the image, though immediately felt to be appo- 

 site, baffles the utmost powers of analysis. The higher 

 poets all use abrupt epithets, Avhicli are alike intimate and 

 Temote, and, as Emerson says, sweetly torment us with in- 

 •\dtations to their inaccessible homes. ^ ^ 



In these latter instances we must suppose that there is"' 

 an identical portion in the similar objects, and that its brain- 

 tract is energetically operative, without, however, being suffi- 

 ciently isolable in its activity as to stand out per se, and form 

 the condition of a distinctly discriminated 'abstract idea.' 

 W^e cannot even by careful search see the bridge over which 

 we passed from the heart of one representation to that of 

 the next. In some brains, however, this mode of transition 

 is extremely common. It would be one of the most impor- 

 tant of physiological discoveries could Ave assign the me- 

 chanical or chemical difference Avhich makes the thoughts 

 of one brain cling close to impartial redintegration, while 

 those of another shoot about in all the lawless revelry of 



