ASSOCIATION. 589 



of the tiling related will surprise no one wlio has read 

 Chapter IX. 



From the guessing of newspaper enigmas to the plot- 

 ting of the policy of an empire there is no other process, 

 than this. We trust to the laws of cerebral nature to pre- 

 sent us spontaneously with the appropriate idea : 



" Our only command over it is by the effort we make to keep the 

 painful unfilled gap in consciousness.* . . . Two circumstances are 

 important to notice: the first is, that volition has no power of calling 

 up images, but only of rejecting and selecting from those offered by 

 spontaneous redintegration.! But the rapidity with which this selec- 

 tion is made, owing to the familiarity of the ways in which spontaneous 

 redintegration runs, gives the process of reasoning the appearance of 

 evoking images that are foreseen to be conformable to the purpose. 

 There is no seeing them before they are offered; there is no summoning 

 them before they are seen. The other circumstance is, that every kind 

 of reasoning is nothing, in its simplest form, but attention. "J 



It is foreign to our purpose here to enter into any 

 detailed analysis of the different classes of mental pursuit. 

 In a scientific research we get perhaps as rich an example 

 as can be found. The inquirer starts with a fact of which 

 he seeks the reason, or with an hypothesis of which he 

 seeks the proof. In either case he keeps turning the 

 matter incessantly in his mind until, by the arousal of asso- 

 ciate upon associate, some habitual, some similar, one arises 

 which he recognizes to suit his need. This, however, may 

 take years. No rules can be given by which the investi- 

 gator may proceed straight to his result; but both here 

 and in the case of reminiscence the accumulation of helps 

 in the way of associations may advance more rapidly by 

 the use of certain routine methods. In striving to recall a 

 thought, for example, we may of set purpose run through 

 the successive classes of circumstance with which it may 



* Ibid. p. 394. 



f All association is called redintegration by Hodgson. 



X Ibid. p. 400. Compare Bain, Emotions and Will, p. 377. "The out 

 goings of the mind are necessarily random; the end alone is the thing that 

 is clear to the view, and with that there is a |perception of the fitness ol 

 every passing suggestion. The volitional energy keeps up the attention on 

 the active search: and the moment that anything in point rises before 

 the mind, it springs upon that like a wild beast upon its pre3^" 



