CHAPTER III.

COMPOUND ASSOCIATION.

J. HITHERTO we have restricted our attention to single threads or invisible links of association, whether of contiguity or similarity. It remains for us yet to consider the case where several threads, or a plurality of links or bonds of connexion, concur in reviving some previous thought or mental state. No new principle is introduced here; we have merely to note, what seems an almost unavoidable effect of the combined action, that the reinstatement is thereby made more easy and certain. Associations that are individually too weak to operate the revival of a past idea may succeed by acting together; and there is thus opened up to our view a means of aiding our recollection or invention when the one thread in hand is too feeble to effect a desired recal. It happens, in fact, that in a very large number of our mental transitions a multiple bond of association is at work, and our subject therefore demands that we should follow out the exposition under this new view.

The combinations may be made up of contiguities alone, of similarities alone, or of contiguity and similarity mixed. Moreover, we shall find that there is a suggesting power in Emotion and in Volition, and that this may conspire with the proper intellectual forces, and may either assist or obstruct their operation. In the reviving of a past image or idea, it is never an unimportant circumstance that the revival gratifies a favourite emotion or is strongly willed in the pursuit of an end. We must endeavour to appreciate as far as we are able the influence of these extra-intellectual energies within the sphere of intellect; but as they would rarely suffice for the reproduction of thought if acting apart and alone, we are

COMPOSITE CONJUNCTIONS.

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led to look at them chiefly as modifying the effects of the proper intellectual forces, or as combining elements in the composition of associations.

The general law may be stated as follows:

Past actions, sensations, thoughts, or emotions are recalled more easily, when associated either through contiguity or similarity, with more than one present object or impression.

COMPOSITION OF CONTIGUITIES.

2. Commencing with the case where a plurality of links of contiguous association is concerned in the revival, there is a wide scope for illustration. Instances might be cited under all the heads of the first chapter of the present Book; but a less profuse selection will suffice. There will, however, be a gain in clearness by taking Conjunctions and Successions separately.

Conjunctions. For a simple example of a compound conjunction, we may suppose a person smelling a liquid and identifying the smell as something felt before, but unable to recal to mind the material causing it. Here the bond between an odour and the odorous substance is too feeble for reproducing the idea and name of the substance. Suppose farther that the person could taste the liquid without feeling the odour, and that in the taste he could recognise a former taste, but could not remember the thing. If in these circumstances the concurrence of the two present sensations of taste and smell brought the substance to the recollection, we should have a true instance of composite association. If one of the two links is fully equal to the restoring effect, there is no clear case under the present law; in order to constitute a proper example each should be insufficient when acting singly.* There

If, by the assistance of the second bond, the revived idea were more vividly or forcibly brought forward, we should have a true example of compound association, although a restoration was possible through the first bond acting alone.

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can I think be little doubt as to the fact that such revivals occur, although we might conceive it otherwise. It would be nothing intrinsically improbable that two links of connexion inadequate separately, should be inadequate jointly; just as no amount of water at the temperature of 40° is able to yield one spoonful at 45°. Combination does not in all cases make strength. Ten thousand commonplace intellects would not make one genius, under any system of co-operation. The multiplication of unaided eyes could never equal the vision of one person with a telescope or microscope.

We have seen that the complex wholes that surround us in the world are held together in the recollection by the adhesive force of Contiguity; such objects as a tree, a human figure, a scene in nature, cannot continue in the mind or be revived as ideas until frequent repetition has made all the parts coherent. After the requisite iteration a complex object, such as a rural village, may be revived by the presence of a single portion of it, as some street, or building, or marked locality. But if the village is one not well known to a person, that is, if the notion of it is not very firmly aggregated in the mind, the traveller just entering may not be liable to identify it by the first thing that strikes him; he may require to go on till several other objects come in view, when probably their joint impression will be able to bring up the whole, in other words, will remind him what village he is now entering, so that he can tell the name and all the particulars that enter into his recollection of it.

So in regarding objects as concretes, or combinations of many distinct qualities,-an orange, for example, affects all the senses, there is a fixing process which makes the different sensations hold together in one complex idea. Here too there is room for the joint action of associating links in recalling an image to the mind. I have already imagined a case of this description, where the united action of smell and taste was supposed to revive the idea of the concrete object causing them, either being of itself insufficient for the purpose.

3. It is, however, when we go beyond the case of isolated objects to the still greater aggregations made up by the rela

LINKS OF LOCALITY AND PERSON.

547

tions of things to one another, that we can reap examples of multiple association in the greatest abundance. In the connexions of objects with places or locality, with persons, with uses, and with all the properties that may belong to them, we see numberless occasions for the working of the composite link in effecting the recal.

When things have a fixed locality, they become associated in the mind with that locality, or with a number of companion objects or appearances. This is one of the means of their restoration to the mind in idea. The sight or remembrance of a harbour recals the shipping; the recollection of a building brings up the things that we know it to contain. Conversely, an object that has a fixed place recals the place, as when St. Paul's reminds us of the neighbourhood where it stands. Now it not seldom happens that we desire to recal a place or an object by this link of connexion but are unable to do so; a second connexion of this or some other kind may then come to the rescue.

Thus, to take the case of searching for things lost. When we do not know where to find a thing, although we ourselves have put it in its place or seen it there, the adhesion of place is by that circumstance declared to be feeble. We then run over other links of association; we get upon the time when we last saw it, the work we were engaged in, or any fact that would along with the lost object have an association with the forgotten place, and we may thus through a multiplicity of feeble connexions attain a force of recal equal to one strong adhesion.

The connexions with persons frequently yield an assisting link in difficult recollection. Objects become associated with their owners, their makers, inventors, all persons concerned in their use, or frequenting their locality. When we are unable to recover a thing by the adhesion between it and other inanimate accompaniments, the suggestion of a personal connexion will often make up what is wanting in reviving efficacy. Thus in my endeavour to recollect an array of objects in some museum, there are some that have completely escaped me; the association of these with their place

in the building and with the adjoining objects which are present to my mind is not enough; but when I chance to recal the donor, the collector, or maker, along with these other adjuncts, the vanished individuals will probably reappear.

It occurs likewise that things are recalled by plurality of association with persons, each link being too weak alone, but made powerful by union. I meet some one in the street, and make an ineffectual attempt to remember where I last saw the same person: by and by some one else occurs to me, who was present in the same place. Perhaps, if I had merely this last person in my view, I should have been as little able to revive the place as with the first alone; whereas with the two I have no longer any difficulty.

The converse operation of remembering a person by two or more different connexions is still more frequently exemplified. A human being standing alone is a sufficiently manysided object to be open to revival through a multiplex bond. Looking upon it, either as an aggregate of many parts, or as a concrete of many qualities, the remark holds to a very great degree. The particulars of a personal description are very numerous, and it often requires many of them to be cited, in order to bring to mind an individual very well known to us. Moreover, the external relations of human beings surpass in variety those of other objects. A person is associated with a name; with locality, habitation, and places of resort; with blood and lineage, a very powerful mental tie in consequence of the strength of the family feelings; with associates and friends; with occupation, pursuits, amusements; with property and possessions; with rank and position; with the many attributes that make up character and reputation; with a particular age; with the time they have lived in; with the vicissitudes and incidents that mark the course of their life. Now, in recalling a person previously known, any one or more of these connexions may serve us; and when a present link is insufficient, others require to be added. If we were endeavouring to recover the historical personages of a given time, the age of Pericles, for example, there would be a certain strength of bond