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In tracing, accordingly, each separate suggestion in the trains of our thought to the nature of the mind,-its original energies or susceptibilities, as operating at the time of the suggestion, and to the laws which then regulate its affections, we find a place for the instance of contrast which we are considering, and see how, when one external object alone is present, a giant may suggest a dwarf, or a dwarf a giant. The laws of mind, like the laws of matter, are only the brief expression of certain general circumstances, in which many phenomena agree; and the laws of suggestion,-if we do not look back to any association or connexion previous to the suggestion itself,do fairly comprehend the particular case considered by us.

Let us next consider, whether this suggestion can be accounted for on the other supposition, which ascribes our trains of ideas to associations previous to the suggestion itself,--to laws of association, in short, in the sense in which that phrase is distinguishable from laws of suggestion.

To treat the question with all due candour, I shall make no objection to the term association, as if it implied too gross an analogy to corporeal things; for, unfortunately, it has this fault only in common with almost every current phrase in the Philosophy of Mind. If we are obliged to speak of mental analysis, of complex affections, of groups of images, and trains of thought, we may well be allowed to speak of the images of these trains as associated, if no objection but that of its seeming materialism can be urged against the phrase. Nor could any objection be fairly made to the association of ideas, as implying a sort of connexion which it is impossible to explain,-if there truly were any consciousness of more than the original perceptions at the time when the association is supposed; but, when there is no consciousness of any thing more, it may be allowed us, at least, to require some proof of the connecting process that is supposed, more than the mere fact of a subsequent suggestion, that may be explained without it.

Even though we were not to require any proof of this kind, however,making all the admissions which in candour we are bound to make, and more than candour requires of us, to the hypothesis which ventures, in the case of suggestion, to go beyond the tendency of the mind at the moment of the suggestion itself, and to ascribe it to some prior mental state or process,-of which we are unconscious, but which the hypothesis supposes to be necessary for the subsequent suggestion, and to which unknown state or process it gives the name of association,—we are not, because we make these admissions, to make any further concession,-such, at least, as would imply in itself an absolute contradiction. If suggestion, in every case, depend on association, -that is to say, if, before objects or feelings can suggest each other, they must have been, at some former period, associated together in the mind, it is evident, that, at some former period, at whatever distance of time it may have been before suggestion, both ideas or feelings must have existed together; for it would surely be absurd to speak of associations actually formed between feelings which either had not begun, or had already ceased, before the supposed association. But this supposition of prior co-existence, though it might explain the mutual suggestion of objects that have been contiguous, as Hume expresses it, in place or time, cannot explain the case at present under consideration, if contrast be considered as different from contiguity; for it is the very first perception of the giant which is supposed by us to induce the conception of the dwarf. It, therefore, cannot admit of being associated with the idea of the dwarf till it have actually suggested it, for, till

the moment of the actual suggestion, the two ideas never have existed together; and if it have already suggested it without any former association, it is surely absurd to have recourse to a subsequent association to account for the prior suggestion, and to say, that that which is first in a series of changes, owes its existence to that which is second, and is produced by that which itself produces.

The particular case of suggestion which we have supposed, then, if contrast be truly a simple principle of suggestion, seems absolutely decisive of the question, because it excludes every association of the two ideas prior to the suggestion itself. In suggestions of objects formerly contiguous, it might have been supposed by those, who in explaining the phenomena of our consciousness, trust more to a gratuitous hypothesis, than to the evidence of consciousness itself, that, as the perceptions originally co-existed, or were immediately successive, some mysterious connexion of those states of mind might be formed at the time of this co-existence, or immediate proximity, that might deserve be expressed by the particular name of association,-in consequence of which connexion, the one state afterwards was to induce the other. But when there has been no such co-existence or succession,-as in the case of the first suggestions of contrast,-what association can there have been on which the suggestions may be supposed to have depended? The association, in such a case, is manifestly nothing more than the momentary influence of the tendency of the suggestion itself; and to say that the suggestion depends on association, is the same thing as it would be to say, that suggestion depends upon suggestion. It depends, indeed, on the relation of the suggesting object to the object suggested,-as similar, opposite, contiguous in time or place, or in some other way related, the tendency to suggest relative feelings after relative feelings being one of the original susceptibilities of the mind, essential to its very nature, but it depends on nothing more; and an object, therefore, the very moment of our first perception of it, may suggest some object that is related to it in one or other of these ways as readily as after we have perceived it a thousand times; though it surely would be a very strange use of a very common term to speak of any previous association in this case, and to say, that objects were associated before they had existence, as they must have been, if this first suggestion had depended on any prior union, or process of any kind.

I need not repeat, that my argument, in this discussion, proceeds on that universal opinion of philosophers, in which our suggestions are considered as of various classes, and not on that more subtile analysis, by which I have endeavoured to show, that there may possibly be only a finer species of proximity in all, though in this case, too, it is equally evident, that the process of association, if it were gratuitously supposed as something different from the original feelings themselves, would be at once equally hypothetical and equally inefficacious for explaining the subsequent suggestions. That an object seen for the first time does suggest many relative conceptions, no one surely will deny; and this single consideration, I cannot but think,—if the distinction universally made, of various principles of suggestion, be admitted, should, of itself, have led to juster notions of our trains of thought. It appears to me, indeed, as I have said on that view of our suggestions, to be absolutely decisive of the question; since, whatever might be supposed in other cases, in this case, at least, there cannot have been any previous connexion of that which suggests with that which is suggested. It proves, that

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the tendency of the mind, in suggestion, is not to exist successively in states which have been previously associated, but simply to exist in successive states, which have to each other certain relations, permanent or accidental,—those relations which, in former Lectures, were considered by us, as reducible to certain primary laws of suggestion.

I am aware that this long argument, on a single point, and that, in itself, not a very interesting one, must have appeared to you rather a heavy tax upon your patience. But, though it is a point not very interesting in itself, or in the sort of discussion and illustration which it admits, it is one which is very interesting, in the applications that may be made of it; particularly as a clear view of the distinction which I wish to impress on your minds, will free you from much misconception, which has clouded the language and opinions of philosophers on this subject, and will prepare you, I flatter myself, for admitting, more readily, that simple arrangement of the intellectual phenomena, which I have ventured to submit to you.

In some former severe discussions like the present, I endeavoured to extract for you some little consolation, from that very fortitude of attention which the discussion required,-pointing out to you the advantage of questions of this kind, in training the mind to those habits of serious thought and patient investigation, which, considered in their primary relation to the intellectual character, are of infinitely greater importance than the instruction which the question itself may afford. "Generosos animos labor nutrit." In the discipline of reason, as in the training of the athlete, it is not for a single victory, which it may give to the youthful champion, that the combat is to be valued, but for that knitting of the joints, and hardening of the muscles, that quickness of eyes and collectedness of effort, which it is forming for the struggles of more illustrious fields.

That the perception of a giant, which never before had co-existed with the idea of a dwarf, should yet be sufficient, without some prior association, to induce that idea, may seem very wonderful; but wonderful as it is, it is really not more mysterious, than if the two ideas had co-existed, or succeeded each other, innumerable times. The great mystery is in the simple fact of the recurrence or spontaneous rise of any idea, without the recurrence of the external cause which produced it, and when that external cause has ceased, perhaps, to have any existence. This fact, however, we must admit, whatever be our theory; and it is all which is necessary to the one theory; while the other, by supposing, or vaguely implying some actual union or association, prior to the suggestion, introduces a new mystery, and, in consequence of the very mystery which it introduces, renders the phenomena, which it professes to explain, still more difficult to be conceived; since the association, which it supposes to be necessary to the suggestion, must, on that supposition, in many cases, be the effect of that very suggestion, to which it is supposed to give rise.

You will now then, I hope, perceive,-or, I flatter myself, may already have perceived, without the necessity of so much repetition of the argument, -the reasons which led me to prefer the term suggestion to association, as a more accurate general term, for all the spontaneous successions of our thought; since, by making the suggestion itself to depend on an association or combination of ideas prior to it, we should not merely have assumed the reality of a process, of which we have no consciousness whatever, but should have excluded, by the impossibility of such previous combination, many of

the most important classes of suggestions, every suggestion that arises from the relations of objects which we perceive for the first time, and, indeed, every suggestion that does not belong, in the strictest sense, to Mr. Hume's single class of contiguity in time.

That our suggestions do not follow each other loosely and confusedly, is no proof of prior associations in the mind, but merely of the general constitutional tendency of the mind, to exist, successively, in states that have certain relations to each other. There is nothing in the nature of our original perceptions, which could enable us to infer this regularity and limitation of our subsequent trains of thought. We learn these from experience alone: and experience does not teach us, that there is any such intervening process of mysterious union, as is supposed, but only, that when the mind has been affected in a certain manner, so as to have one perception or conception, it is, successively, and of itself, affected in certain other manners, so as to have other relative conceptions. If the association of ideas be understood to mean nothing more than this succession of ideas arising without an external cause, and involving no prior union of the ideas suggesting and suggested, -nor, in short, any influence previous to that which operates at the moment of the suggestion itself, though it would certainly, with this limited meaning, (which excludes what is commonly meant by the term association,) be a very awkward phrase,-still, if it were always understood in this limited sense alone, it might be used with safety. But in this sense, the only sense in which it can be used without error,—it must always be remembered, that the association of ideas denotes as much the successions of ideas of objects which never have existed together before, as the successions of ideas of objects which have been perceived together, that there are not two separate mental processes, therefore, following perception, and necessary to the succession,-one by which ideas are primarily associated, and another by which they are subsequently suggested,-but that the association is, in truth, only another word for the fact of the suggestion itself. All this, however, being admitted, it may perhaps be said,-what advantage is to be gained from the use of a simpler term, or even from the more accurate distinction which such a term denotes?

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The principal advantage that is to be derived from it, is the great simplification which it allows of the phenomena by the removal of much of that mystery, which a more complicated theory had made to hang over some of the processes of thought. When suggestion was supposed to depend on former associations of ideas, and when, in many cases, it must have been felt to be difficult, or rather impossible, to discover any co-existence or immediate succession of the primary perceptions, by which such association could be supposed to be formed; it could scarcely fail to happen,-as, indeed, truly took place, that many cumbrous distinctions and still more cumbrous hypotheses, would be formed, to account for the apparent anomalies.

It is the use of this unfortunate phrase, indeed, rather than of the simple term suggestion, which appears to me to have filled our intellectual systems with the names of so many superfluous powers. The supposed necessity in our trains of thought, of some previous association, of course rendered it necessary, that the conceptions ascribed to this cause, should be such as before existed in a similar form, since, without this previous existence, they could not be supposed to admit of previous connexion; and, therefore, when

the suggestions were very different, so as to have the semblance almost of a new creation, it became necessary to invent some new power distinct from that of association, to which they might be ascribed. What was in truth a mere simple suggestion, flowing from the same laws with other suggestions, became in this manner something more, and was ranked as a product of fancy or imagination,-nothing being so easy as the invention of a new name. A similar illusion gave rise to the supposition of various other intellectual powers, or, at least, favoured greatly the admission of such powers by the difficulty of accounting for suggestions which could not have arisen from previous associations; and one simple power or susceptibility of the mind was thus metamorphosed into various powers, all distinct from each other, and distinct from that power of which they were only modifications.

The chief circumstances which probably led to the belief of some actual union or association of ideas, previous to suggestion, I conceive to have been the peculiar importance of that order of suggestions, of which proximity, and therefore former co-existence, or immediate succession of the direct objects of thought, are the distinguishing characteristic. If there had been no such order of suggestions as this, but conception had followed conception merely according to the other relations, such as those of analogy or contrast, we never should have thought of any association, or other prior influence, distinct from the suggestion itself. But, when objects perceived together, or in immediate succession, arise again together, or in immediate succession, as if linked by some invisible bonds, it is a very natural illusion, that the suggestion itself should seem to depend on a mysterious union of this kind. The illusion is greatly strengthened by the circumstance, that it is to the relation of direct proximity of objects, we have recourse, in all those processes of thought which have commonly been termed recollections, or voluntary reminiscences. We think of all the variety of events that happened at the time at which we know, that the same event, now forgotten by us, occurred, and we pursue this whole series through its details, as if expecting to discover some tie that may give into our hand the fugitive feeling, which we wish to detect. The suggestion which we desire, does probably at length occur, in consequence of this process; and we are hence very naturally accustomed to look back to a period preceding the suggestion, as to the real source of the suggestion itself.

It must be remembered too, that although the mind were truly susceptible of the influence in its trains of thought, of various relations of a different kind, as well as those of contiguity, even these suggestions, though originally different, would seem, at length, reducible to this one paramount order; because, after the first suggestion which might have arisen from mere analogy or contrast, a real contiguity, in point of time, would be formed of the suggesting and suggested conception, which had become proximate in succession; and the same suggestion, therefore, when it recurred, might seem to have arisen as much from this contiguity, in a prior train of thought, as from the contrast or analogy, which of themselves might have been sufficient to produce it, without any such proximity of the direct images themselves.

In all these ways, it is very easy to perceive how, in considering every simple suggestion, our thoughts should be continually turned to the past, and the suggestion itself, therefore, be converted into association; the exceptions being forgotten, or receiving a different name, that we might satisfy ourselves

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