ASSOCIATION. 593 



and that I still believe association of coexistent or sequent 

 impressions to be the one elementary law. 



Contrast has also been held to be an independent agent in 

 association. But the reproduction of an object contrasting 

 with one already in the mind is easily explained on our 

 principles. Kecent writers, in fact, all reduce it either 

 to similarity or contiguity. Contrast always presupposes 

 generic similarity ; it is only the extremes of a dass which 

 are contrasted, black and white, not black and sour, or 

 white and prickly. A machinery which reproduces a simi- 

 lar at all, may reproduce the opposite similar, as well as 

 any intermediate term. Moreover, the greater number of 

 contrasts are habitually coupled in speech, young and old, 

 life and death, rich and poor, etc., and are, as Dr. Bain 

 says, in everybody's memory.* 



I trust that the student will now feel that the way to a 

 deeper understanding of the order of our ideas lies in the 

 direction of cerebral physiology. The elementary process 

 of revival can be nothing but the law of habit. Truly the 

 day is distant when physiologists shall actually trace from 

 cell-group to cell-group the irradiations which we have hypo- 

 thetically invoked. Probably it will never arrive. The 

 schematism we have used is, moreover, taken immediately 

 from the analysis of objects into their elementary parts, 

 and only extended by analogy to the brain. And yet it is 

 only as incorporated in the brain that such a schematism 

 can represent anything caiisal. This is, to my mind, the con- 

 clusive reason for saying that the order of presentation of 

 the mind's materiaJs is due to cerebral physiology alone. 



The law of accidental prepotency of certain processes 

 over others falls also within the sphere of cerebral proba- 

 bilities. Granting such instability as the brain-tissue re- 

 quires, certain points must always discharge more quickly 

 and strongly than others ; and this prepotency would shift 

 its place from moment to moment by accidental causes, 



* Cf. Bain, Senses and Intellect, 564 ff.; J. S. Mill, Note 39 to J. Mill's 

 Analysis ; Lipps, Grundtatsachen, 97. 



