596 PSYCHOLOGY. 



which the Latins called sagacitas, and sollertia ; a hunting out of the 

 causes, of some effect, present or past ; or of the effects, of some present 

 or past cause." 



The most important passage after tliis of Hobbes is 

 Hume's : 



"As all simple ideas may be separated by the imagination, and 

 may be united again in what form it pleases, nothing would be more 

 unaccountable than the operations of that faculty, were it not guided 

 by some universal principles, which render it, in some measure, uniform 

 with itself in all times and places. Were ideas entirely loose and un- 

 connected, chance alone would join them ; and 'tis impossible the same 

 simple ideas should fall regularly into complex ones (as they commonly 

 do) without some bond of union among them, some associating quality, 

 by which one idea naturally introduces another. This uniting princi- 

 ple among ideas is not to be considered as an inseparable connection ; 

 for that has been already excluded from the imagination. Nor yet are 

 we to conclude that without it the mind cannot join two ideas ; for 

 nothing is more free than that faculty : but we are only to regard it as 

 a gentle force, which commonly prevails, and is the cause why, among 

 other things, languages so nearly correspond to each other ; nature in 

 a manner pointing to every one those simple ideas which are most 

 proper to be united in a complex one. The qualities from which this 

 association arises, and by which the mind is after this manner con- 

 veyed from one idea to another, are three, viz., Resemblance, Con- 

 tiguity in time or place, and Cause and Effect. 



' ' I believe it will not be very necessary to prove that these qualities 

 produce an association among ideas, and upon the appearance of one 

 idea naturally introduce another. 'Tis plain that in the course of our 

 thinking, and in the constant revolution of our ideas, our imagination 

 runs easily from one idea to any other that resembles it, and that this 

 quality alone is to the fancy a sufficient bond and association. 'Tis 

 likewise evident, that as the senses, in changing their objects, are 

 necessitated to change them regularly, and take them as they lie con- 

 tiguous to each other, the imagination must by long custom acquire 

 the same method of thinking, and run along the parts of space and 

 time in conceiving its objects. As to the connection that is made by 

 the relation of cause and effect, we shall have occasion afterwards to 

 examine it to the bottom, and therefore shall not at present insist upon 

 it. 'Tis sufficient to observe that there is no relation which produces 

 a stronger connection in the fancy, and makes one idea more readily 

 recall another, than the relation of cause and effect betwixt their ob- 

 jects. . . . These are therefore the principles of union or cohesion 

 among our simple ideas, and in the imagination supply the place of 

 that inseparable connection by which they are united in our memory. 

 Here is a kind of Attraction, which in the mental world will be found 



