ASSOCIATION. 601 



to explain the association of two ideas by a conscious refer- 

 ence of the first to the point of time when its sensation was 

 experienced, which point of time is no sooner thought of 

 than its content, namely, the second idea, arises. Messrs. 

 Bain and Mill, however, and the immense majority of con- 

 temporary psychologists retain both Resemblance and Con- 

 tiguity as irreducible principles of Association. 



Professor Bain's exposition of association is by common 

 consent looked upon as the best expression of the English 

 school. Perception of agreement and difference, retentive- 

 ness, and the two sorts of association, contiguity and similar- 

 ity, are by him regarded as constituting all that is meant by 

 intellect proper. His pages are j)aiustaking and instructive 

 from a descriptive point of view ; though, after my own at- 

 temjjt to deal with the subject causally, I can hardly 

 award to them any profound explanatory value. Associa- 

 tion by Similarity, too much neglected by the British school 

 before Bain, receives from him the most generous exempli- 

 fication. As an instructive passage, the following, out of 

 many equally good, may be chosen to quote : 



" We may have similarity in form with diversity of use, and similar- 

 ity of use with diversity of form. A rope suggests other ropes and 

 cords, if we look to the appearance; but looking to the use, it may sug- 

 gest an iron cable, a wooden prop, an iron girding, a leather band, or 

 bevelled gear. In spite of diversity of appearance, the suggestion turns 

 on what answers a common end. If we are very much attracted by 

 sensible appearances, there will be the more difficulty in recalling 

 things that agree only in the use; if, on the other hand, we are pro- 

 foundly sensitive to the one point of practical efficiency as a tool, the 

 peculiarities not essential to this will be little noticed, and we shall be 

 ever ready to revive past objects corresponding in use to some one pres- 

 ent, although diverse in all other circumstances. We become oblivious 

 to the difference between a horse, a steam-engine, and a waterfall, 

 when our minds are engrossed with the one circumstance of moving 

 power. The diversity in these had no doubt for a long time the effect 

 of keeping back their first identitication; and to obtuse intellects, this 

 identification might have been for ever impossible. A strong concen- 

 tration of mind upon the single peculiarity of mechanical force, and a 

 degree of indifference to the general aspect of the things themselves, 



genus, species, and, so far as may be, the same variety," which Spencer calls 

 (p. 257) ' the sole process of association of feelings.' as any equivalent for 

 what is commonly known as Associatiou by similarity. 



