BEASONING. 347 



scientific investigator, and may lead to the noticing of m 

 in an abstract way. Certainly this is obvious ; and no 

 conclusion is left to us but to assert that, after the few 

 most powerful practical and aesthetic interests, our chief 

 help towards noticing those special characters of phenom- 

 ena, which, when once possessed and named, are used as 

 reasons, class names, essences, or middle terms, is this 

 association by similarity. Without it, indeed, the deliberate 

 procedure of the scientific man would be impossible : he 

 could never collect his analogous instances. But it oper- 

 ates of itself in highly-gifted minds without any delibera- 

 tion, spontaneously collecting analogous instances, uniting 

 in a moment what in nature the whole breadth of space and 

 time keeps separate, and so permitting a perception of 

 identical points in the midst of different circumstances, 

 which minds governed wholly by the law of contiguity 

 could never begin to attain. 



Fig. 



Figure 80 shows this. If m, in the present representa- 

 tion A, calls up B, C, D, and E, which are similar to A in 

 possessing it, and calls them up in rapid succession, then 

 m, being associated almost simultaneously with such vary- 

 ing concomitants, will ' roll out ' and attract our separate 

 notice. 



