54 HABIT AND INTELLIGENCE. [chap 



in the real world ; as when a poem or a piece of music is 

 written out, or a machine is constructed, after being first 

 Eeasoning. imagined in the mind. Eeasoning consists in forming, or 

 attempting to form, associations within the mind which 

 will correspond to the actual combinations of things in the 

 real world ; as, for instance, when Sir E. Murchison, from 

 the scanty data before him, predicted the discovery of that 

 physical configuration which Dr. Livingstone afterwards 

 discovered in South Africa. 



It may appear to some of my readers an inaccurate and 

 unjustifiable extension of the use of the word, to describe 

 imagination and reasoning as cases of association. I reply, 

 that they are unquestionably cases of the formation of 

 mental, or ideal, combinations ; and all mental combina- 

 tion must be the association of ideas already in the mind ; 

 The mind because all knowledge has its beginning in experience : the 

 f^^^^ot mirid, strictly speaking, has" no creative power, and can 

 can only only combine the materials furnished to it by experience, 

 com me. j^ ^^^ present state of psychological science, I thiak this 

 is unquestionable. But it does not follow that true mental 

 originality is impossible. The mind may be truly origiaal 

 in its mode of combining the data of experience, just as 

 an architect may be truly original though he cannot create 

 the stone with which he buUds, but must obtain it from 

 the quarry. 



I have said that the law of mental habit, or the associa- 

 tion of ideas, enters into every mental process except the 

 most elementary. I think this does not admit of question. 

 Are all But it is a question, whether the action of the mind 

 mental ^^ ^j^g ^^^g^ given to it by experience, in virtue of the 

 r -able to the law of mental habit alone, is capable of accounting for 

 *^^ -inTntal ^^^ ^^^ facts of mind. This, in fact, is another aspect of 

 hahit the question which I have discussed in the chapter on the 

 Parallel Origin of species. I there considered the question, whether 

 question ^-^q facts of Organic adaptation can be due to the actions, 



in biology. ° ^ 



direct and indirect, of the surrounding world of multiform 



i forces, acting on the organism through the laws of liabit 



I \^liev0 Q^^ variation alone ; and I came to the conclusion that 



m mtelli- . t t ■ . -,. 



gence, in such IS not the case ; that, in addition to the unintelligent 



