meaning, which any other words of the language might be employed to denote. What social affection could continue for an hour, if the sight of a friend were to suggest, in intimate combination, not the kindnesses which he had conferred, and all the enjoyments of which he had been the source, but the malice, and envy, and revenge of some jealous and disappointed enemy?

He who has given us, in one simple principle, the power of reviving the past, has not made his gift so unavailing. The feelings, which this wonderful principle preserves and restores, arise, not loosely and confusedly-for what is there in the whole wide scene of nature, which does so occur?-but, according to general laws or tendencies of succession, contrived with the most admirable adaptation to our wants, so as to bring again before us the knowledge formerly acquired by us, at the very time when it is most profitable that it should return. A value is thus given to experience, which otherwise would not be worthy of the name; and we are enabled to extend it almost at pleasure, so as to profit, not merely by that experience which the events of nature, occurring in conformity with these general laws, must at any rate have afforded to us,—but to regulate this very experience itself,— to dispose objects and events, so that, by tendencies of suggestion, on the firmness of which we may put perfect reliance, they shall give us, perhaps at the distance of many years, such lessons as we may wish them to yield,— and thus to invent and create, in a great measure, the intellectual and moral history of our future life, as an epic or dramatic writer arranges at his will the continued scenes of his various and magnificent narrative. I need not add, that it is on this skilful management of the laws, which regulate our trains of thought, the whole theory and practice of education are founded ;that art, which I have already repeatedly represented to you as the noblest of all the arts of man-itself the animating spirit of every other art-which exerts its own immediate operation, not on lifeless things, but on the affections and faculties of the soul itself—and which has raised us from the dust, where we slept or trembled, in sluggish, yet ferocious ignorance, the victims of each other, and of every element around us, to be the sharers and diffusers of the blessings of social polity, the measurers of the earth and of the skies, and the rational worshippers of that eternal Being by whom they and we were created.

That there is a tendency of ideas to suggest each other, without any renewed perception of the external objects which originally excited them, and that the suggestion is not altogether loose and indefinite, but that certain ideas have a peculiar tendency to suggest certain other relative ideas in associate trains of thought, is too familiar to you, as a general fact of our intellectual nature, to require to be illustrated by example.

It has been beautifully compared, by the most philosophic of our poets, to the mutual influence of two sympathetic needles, which Strada, in one of his Prolusions, availing himself of a supposed fact, which was then believed, or scarcely doubted by many philosophers, makes the subject of verses, supposed to be recited by Cardinal Bembo, in the character of Lucretius. The needles were fabled to have been magnetized together, and suspended over different circles, so as to be capable of moving along an alphabet. In these circumstances, by the remaining influence of their original kindred magnetism, they were supposed, at whatever distance, to follow each other's motions, and pause accordingly at the same point; so that, by watching them at con

certed hours, the friends, who possessed this happy telegraph, were supposed to be able to communicate to each other their feelings, with the same accuracy and confidence as when they were together.

"For when the different images of things,

By chance combin'd have struck the attentive soul
With deeper impulse, or, connected long,
Have drawn her frequent eye; howe'er distinct
The external scenes, yet off the ideas gain
From that conjunction an eternal tie
And sympathy unbroken. Let the Mind
Recall one partner of the various league,-
Immediate, lo! the firm confederates rise,
And each his former station straight resumes;
One movement governs the consenting throng,
And all at once with rosy pleasure shine,
Or all are sadden'd with the glooms of care.
'Twas thus, if ancient fame the truth unfold,
Two faithful needles, from the informing touch
Of the same parent-stone, together drew
Its mystic virtue, and at first conspir'd
With fatal impulse quivering to the pole,

Then, though disjoin'd by kingdoms, though the main
Roll'd its broad surge betwixt,-and different stars
Beheld their wakeful motions,-yet preserv'd
The former friendship, and remember'd still
The alliance of their birth. Whate'er the line
Which one possessed, nor pause nor quiet knew
The sure associate, ere, with trembling speed,
He found its path, and fixed unerring there.
Such is the secret union, when we feel

A song, a flower, a name, at once restore
Those long connected scenes where first they mov'd
The attention. Backward through her mazy walks,
Guiding the wanton fancy to her scope,

To temples, courts, or fields,-with all the band
Of (living)* forms, of passions, and designs
Attendant; whence, if pleasing in itself,
The prospect from that sweet accession gains
Redoubled influence o'er the listening Mind.
By these mysterious ties, the busy power
Of Memory her ideal train preserves
Entire; or, when they would elude her watch,
Reclaims their fleeting footsteps, from the waste
Of dark Oblivion."

What then are these mysterious ties ?-or, to state the question more philosophically, what are the general circumstances which regulate the successions of our ideas?

That there is some regularity in these successions, must, as I have already remarked, have been felt by every one; and there are many references to such regularity in the works of philosophers of every age. The most striking ancient reference, however, to any general circumstances, or laws of suggestion, though the enumeration of these is hinted, rather than developed at any length,-is that which you will find in a passage, quoted by Dr. Beattie and Mr. Stewart, from Aristotle. It is a passage, explanatory of the process by which, in voluntary reminiscence, we endeavour to discover the idea of which we are in search. We are said to hunt for it-(@ngsvo is the word in the original)-among other ideas, either of objects existing at present, or at some former time; and from their resemblance, contrariety, * Painted-Orig.

and contiguityἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν, ἢ ἄλλου τινὸς, καὶ ἀφ' ὁμοίου, ἢ ἐναντίου, ἢ του συνέγγυς. Διὰ τοῦτο γινεταὶ ἡ ἀνάμνησις.* This brief enumeration of the general circumstances which direct us in reminiscence is worthy of our attention on its own account; and is not less remarkable on account of the very close resemblance which it bears to the arrangement afterwards made by Mr. Hume, though there is no reason to believe that the modern philosopher was at all acquainted with the classification which had, at so great a distance of time, anticipated his own.

I must remark, however, that though it would be in the highest degree unjust to the well-known liberality and frankness of Mr. Hume's character, to suppose him to have been aware of any enumeration of the general circumstances on which suggestion appears to depend, prior to that which he has himself given us, his attempt was far from being so original as he supposed. I do not allude merely to the passage of Aristotle, already quoted, nor to a corresponding passage, which I might have quoted, from one of the most celebrated of his commentators, Dr. Thomas Aquinas, but to various passages which I have found in the works of writers of much more recent date, in which the influence of resemblance and contiguity, the two generic circumstances to which, on his own principles, his own triple division should have been reduced, is particularly pointed out. Thus, to take an example from an elementary work of a very eminent author, Ernesti, published in the year 1734,-his Initia Doctrinæ Solidioris,-with what precision has he laid down those very laws of association of which Mr. Hume speaks. After stating the general fact of suggestion, or association, under the Latin term phantasia, he proceeds to state the principles which guide it. All the variety of these internal successions of our ideas, he says, may be reduced to the following law. When one image is present in the mind, it may suggest the image of some absent object-either of one that is similar in some respect to that already present-or of one of which the present is a partor of one which has been present together with it on some former occasion. "Hujus autem phantasiæ lex hæc est ; Præsentibus animo rerum imaginibus quibuscunque, recurrere et redire ad animum possunt rerum absentium olimque perceptarum imagines, præsentibus similes, vel quarum, quæ sunt præsentes, partes sunt,-vel denique, quas cum præsentibus simul hausimus."+ Even the arrangement, as stated by Mr. Hume, is not expressed in more formal terms. But as it is to his arrangement the philosophers of our own country are accustomed to refer, in treating of association, the importance thus attached to it gives a preferable claim to our fuller discussion. It is stated by him briefly in two paragraphs of his Essay on the Association

of Ideas.

"Though it be too obvious to escape observation," he says, "that different ideas are connected together, I do not find that any philosopher has attempted to enumerate or class all the principles of association; a subject, however, that seems worthy of curiosity. To me there appear to be only three principles of connexion among ideas, viz. resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and cause or effect.

"That these principles serve to connect ideas, will not, I believe, be much doubted. A picture naturally leads our thoughts to the original. The mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an inquiry * Aristot. de Memor. and Reminisc. c. ii. v. II. p. 86. Edit. Du Val.

+ De Mente Humana, C. I. Sect. xvi. p. 138, 139:

or discourse concerning the others. And if we think of a wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on the pain which follows it. But that the enumeration is complete, and that there are no other principles of association except these, may be difficult to prove to the satisfaction of the reader or even to a man's own satisfaction. All we can do, in such cases, is to run over several instances, and examine carefully the principle which binds the different thoughts to each other, never stopping, till we render the principle as general as possible. The more instances we examine, and the more care we employ, the more assurance shall we acquire, that the enumeration which we form from the whole is complete and entire."*

On these paragraphs of Mr. Hume, a few obvious criticisms present themselves. In the first place, however, I must observe,-to qualify in some degree the severity of the remarks which may be made on his classification, -that it is evident, from the very language now quoted to you, that he is far from bringing forward his classification as complete. He states, indeed, that it appears to him, that there are no other principles of connexion among our ideas than the three which he has mentioned; but he adds, that though the reality of their influence as connecting principles will not, he believes, be much doubted, it may still be difficult to prove, to the satisfaction of his reader, or even of himself, that the enumeration is complete; and he recommends, in consequence, a careful examination of every instance of suggestion, in the successive trains of our ideas, that other principles, if any such there be, may be detected.

But to proceed to the actual classification, as presented to us by Mr. Hume. A note, which he has added to the paragraph that contains his system, affords perhaps as striking an instance as is to be found in the history of science of that illusion, which the excessive love of simplicity tends to produce, even in the most acute and subtile philosopher, so as to blind, to the most manifest inconsistencies, in his own arrangement, those powers of critical discernment which would have flushed instant detection on inconsistencies far less glaringly apparent in the speculations of another. After stating, that there appear to him to be only the three principles of connexion already mentioned, Mr. Hume adds, in a note,--as an instance of other connexions apparently different from these three, which may, notwithstanding, be reduced to them,

"Contrast or contrariety, also, is a species of connexion among ideas. But it may perhaps be considered as a mixture of causation and resemblance. Where two objects are contrary, the one destroys the other, i. e. is the cause of its annihilation, and the idea of the annihilation of an object implies the idea of its former existence."

When we hear or read for the first time this little theory of the suggestions of contrast, there is, perhaps, no one who does not feel some difficulty in believing it to be a genuine speculation of that powerful mind which produced it. Contrast, says Mr. Hume, is a mixture of causation and resemblance. An object, when contrasted with another, destroys it. In destruction there is causation; and we cannot conceive destruction, without having the idea of former existence. Thus, to take an instance-Mr. Hume does not deny, that the idea of a dwarf may suggest, by contrast, the idea of a giant; but he says that the idea of a dwarf suggests the idea of a giant, because the idea of a dwarf destroys the idea of a giant, and thus, by the connecting * Hume's Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, Sect. III.

principle of causation involved in all destruction, may suggest the idea destroyed; and he adds, as an additional reason for the suggestion, that the idea of the annihilation of a giant implies the idea of the former existence of a giant. And all this strange and complicated analysis, this explanation, not of the obscurum per obscurius, which is a much more intelligible paralogism, but of the lucidum per obscurum, is seriously brought forward by its very acute author, as illustrating the simple and familiar fact of the suggestion of opposites, in contrast, by opposites.

In the first place, I may remark, that in Mr. Hume's view of contrast, it is not easy to discover what the resemblance is of which he speaks, in a case in which the objects in themselves are said by him to be so contrary, that the one absolutely destroys the other by this contrariety alone; and, indeed, if there be truly this mixed resemblance in contrast, what need is there of having recourse to annihilation or causation at all, to account for the suggestion, since the resemblance alone in this, as in every other case, might be sufficient to explain the suggestion, without the necessity of any separate division;-as the likeness of a single feature in the countenance of a stranger, is sufficient to bring before us in conception the friend whom he resembles, though the resemblance be in the single feature only.

In the second place, there is no truth, if, indeed, there be any meaning whatever, in the assertion that in contrast one of the objects destroys the other; for, so far is the idea of the dwarf from destroying the idea of the giant, that, in the actual case supposed, it is the very reason of the existence of the second idea; nay, the very supposition of a perceived contrast implies that there is no such annihilation; for both ideas must be present to the mind together, or they could not appear either similar or dissimilar, that is to say, could not be known by us as contrasted, or contrary, in any respect. It is, indeed, not very easy to conceive, how a mind so acute as that of Mr. Hume should not have discovered that grossest of all logical and physical errors, involved in his explanation, that it accounts for the existence of a feeling, by supposing it previously to exist as the cause of itself. If, as he says, the idea of the annihilation of an object implies the idea of its former existence-an assertion which is by no means so favourable as he thinks to his own theory-it must surely be admitted, that no annihilation can take place before the existence of that which is to be annihilated. Whether, therefore, we suppose, that the idea of the dwarf, which suggests the idea of the giant, annihilates that idea, or is itself annihilated by it, the two ideas of the dwarf and the giant must have existed before the annihilation of either. The suggestion, in short, which is the difficulty, and the only difficulty to be explained, must have completely taken place, before the principle can even be imagined to operate, on which the suggestion itself is said to depend.

Such minute criticism, however, is perhaps more than it is necessary to give to a doctrine so obviously false, even sanctioned as it is by so very eminent a name.