600 P8YCU0L0OT. 



in a pleasure unforeseen. The latter becomes so associated 

 with the motion that whenever we think of it the idea of the 

 motion arises ; and the idea of the motion when vivid causes 

 the motion to occur. This is an act of will. 



Nothing is easier than for a philosopher of this school 

 to explain from experience such a notion as that of inlinitude. 



" He sees in it an ordinary manifestation of one of the laws of the 

 association of ideas, — the hiw that the idea of a thing irresistibly sug- 

 gests the idea of any other thing which has been often experienced in 

 close conjunction with it, and not otherwise. As we have never had 

 experience of any point of space without other points beyond it, nor of 

 any point of time without others following it, the law of indissoluble 

 association makes it impossible for us to think of any point of space or 

 time, however distant, without having the idea irresistibly realized, in 

 imagination, of other points still more remote. And thus the supposed 

 original and inherent property of these two ideas is completely explained 

 and accounted for by the law of association ; and we are enabled to see 

 that if Space or Time were really susceptible of termination, we should 

 be just as unable as we now are to conceive the idea." * 



These examples of the Associationist Psychology are with 

 the exception of the last, very crudely expressed, but they 

 suffice for our temporary need. Hartley and James Mill f 

 improved upon Hume so far as to employ but a single prin- 

 ciple of association, that of contiguity or habit. Hartley 

 ignores resemblance, James Mill exj)ressly repudiates it in 

 a passage which is assuredly one of the curiosities of liter- 

 ature : 



" I believe it will be found that we are accustomed to see like things 

 together, "When we see a tree, we generally see more trees than one ; 

 a sheep, more sheep than one ; a man, more men than one. From this 

 observation, I think, we may refer resemblance to the law of frequency 

 [i.e., contiguity], of which it seems to form only a particular case." 



Mr. Herbert Spencer has still more recently tried to con- 

 struct a Psychology which ignores Association by Simi- 

 larity, | and in a chapter, which also is a curiosity, he tries 



* Review of Bain's Psychology, by J. S. Mill, in Edinb. Review, Oct. 1, 

 1859, p. 293. 



f Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, J. S. Mill's edition, 

 vol. I. p. 111. 



X On the Associability of Relations between Feelings, in Principles of 

 Psychology, vol. i. p. 259. It is impossible to regard the " cohering of each 

 feeling with previously-experienced feelings of the same class, order, 



