ASSOCIATION. 691 



some of the elements of the brain-process of the ob- 

 ject which comes to view. This awakening is the opera- 

 tive machinery, the causal agency, throughout, quite as 

 much so in the kind of association I have called by the 

 name of Similarity, as in any other sort. The similarity 

 between the objects, or between the thoughts (if similarity 

 there be between these latter), has no causal agency in 

 carrying us from one to the other. It is but a result — the 

 effect of the usual causal agent when this happens to work 

 in a certain particular and assignable way. But ordinary 

 writers talk as if the similarity of the objects were itself an 

 agent, co-ordinate with habit, and independent of it, and 

 like it able to push objects before the mind. This is quite 

 unintelligible. The similarity of two things does not exist 

 till both things are there — it is meaningless to talk of it as 

 an agent of production of anything, whether in the ph3'sical 

 or the psychical realms.* It is a relation which the mind 

 perceives after the fact, just as it may perceive the relations 

 of superiority, of distance, of causality, of container and 

 content, of substance and accident, or of contrast, between 

 an object and some second object which the associative 

 machinery calls up.f 



There are, nevertheless, able writers who not only insist 

 on preserving association by similarity as a distinct ele- 

 mentary law, but who make it the most elementary law, 

 and seek to derive contiguous association from it. Their 

 reasoning is as follows : When the present impression A 



* Compare what is said of the principle of Similarity by F. H. Bradley, 

 Principles of Logic, pp. 294 ff. ; E. Rabier, Psychologie, 187 ff. 

 Faulhau, Critique Philosopbique, 2me Serie, i. 458; Rabier, ibid. 460 

 Pillon, ibid. ii. 55; B. P. Bowne, Introduction to Psych. Theory, 92 

 Ward, Encyclop. Britt. art. Psychology, p. 60; Wahle, Vierteljahrsch. f. 

 wiss. Philos. IX. 426-431. 



f Dr. McCosh is accordingly only logical when he sinks similarity in 

 what he calls the "Law of Correlation, according to which, when we have 

 discovered a relation between things, the idea of one tends to bring up the 

 others" (Psychology, the Cognitive Powers, p. 130). The relations men- 

 tioned by this author are Identity, Whole and Parts, Resemblance, Space, 

 Time, Quantity, Active Property, and Cause and Effect. If perceived 

 relations among objects are to be treated as grounds for their appearance 

 before the mind, similarity has of course no right to an exclusive, or even 

 to a predominant, place. 



