be from unheeded, though, perhaps, early impressions, or wanton fancies at first, which would have been acknowledged the original of them, if they had been warily observed. A grown person surfeiting with honey, no sooner hears the name of it, but his fancy immediately carries sickness and qualms to his stomach, and he cannot bear the very idea of it; other ideas of dislike, and sickness, and vomiting, presently accompany it, and he is disturbed, but he knows from whence to date this weakness, and can tell how he got this indisposition. Had this happened to him by an overdose of honey, when a child, all the same effects would have followed, but the cause would have been mistaken, and the antipathy counted natural.

§. 8. I mention this not out of any great necessity there is, in this present argument, to distinguish nicely between natural and acquired antipathies; but I take notice of it for another purpose, viz. that those who have children, or the charge of their education, would think it worth their while diligently to watch, and carefully to prevent the undue connexion of ideas in the minds of young people. This is the time most susceptible of lasting impressions; and though those relating to the health of the body are by discreet people minded and fenced against, yet I am apt to doubt, that those which relate more peculiarly to the mind, and terminate in the understanding or passions, have been much less heeded than the thing deserves: nay, those relating purely to the understanding have, as I suspect, been by most men wholly overlooked.

A great cause

§. 9. This wrong connexion in our minds of ideas in themselves loose and in

of errours. dependent of one another, has such an in

fluence, and is of so great force to set us awry in our actions, as well moral as natural, passions, reasonings and notions themselves, that perhaps there is not any one thing that deserves more to be looked after.

Instances.

§. 10. The ideas of goblins and sprights have really no more to do with darkness than light; yet let but a foolish maid inculcate these ofte. on the mind of a child, and raise them there to

5

gether,

gether, possibly he shall never be able to separate them again so long as he lives: but darkness shall ever afterwards bring with it those frightful ideas, and they shall be so joined, that he can no more bear the one than the other.

་

§. 11. A man receives a sensible injury from ̧another, thinks on the man and that action over and over; and by ruminating on them strongly, or anuch in his mind, so cements those two ideas together, that he makes them almost one: never thinks on the man, but the pain and displeasure he suffered comes into his mind with it, so that he scarce distinguishes them, but has as much an aversion for the one as the other. Thus hatreds are often begotten from slight and innocent occasions, and quarrels propagated and continued in the world.

7

Why time

cures some disorders in

the mind, which reason

cannot.

§. 12. A man has suffered pain or sickness in any place; he saw his friend die in such a room; though these have in nature nothing to do one with another, yet when the idea of the place occurs to his mind, it brings (the impression being once made) that of the pain and displeasure with it; he confounds them in his mind, and can as little bear the one as the other. §. 13. When this combination is settled, and while it lasts, it is not in the power of reason to help us, and relieve us from the effects of it. Ideas in our minds, Ideas in our minds, when they are there will operate according to their natures and circumstances; and here we see the cause why time cures certain affections, which reason, though in the right, and allowed to be so, has not power over, nor is able against them to prevail with those who are apt to hearken to it in other cases. The death of a child, that was the daily delight of his mother's eyes, and joy of her soul, rends from her heart the whole comfort of her life, and gives her all the torment imaginable: use the consolations of reason in this case, and you were as good preach ease to one on the rack, and hope to allay, by rational discourses, the pain of his joints tearing asunder. Till time has by disuse separated the sense of that enjoyE e 4

ment,

ment, and its loss, from the idea of the child returning to her memory, all representations, though ever so reasonable, are in vain; and therefore some in whom the union between these ideas is never dissolved, spend their lives in mourning, and carry an incurable sorrow. to their graves.

Farther in

stances of the

effect of the

$. 14. A friend of mine knew one perfectly cured of madness by a very harth. and offensive operation. The gentleman, association of who was thus recovered, with great sense ideas. of gratitude and acknowledgment, owned the cure all his life after, as the greatest obligation he could have received; but whatever gratitude and reason suggested to him, he could never bear the sight of the operator: that image brought back with it the idea of that agony which he suffered from his hands, which was too mighty and intolerable for him to endure.

§ 15. Many children imputing the pain they endured at school to their books they were corrected for, so join those ideas together, that a book becomes their aversion, and they are never reconciled to the study and use of them all their lives after; and thus reading becomes a torment to them, which otherwise possibly they might have made the great pleasure of their lives. There are rooms convenient enough, that some men cannot study in, and fashions of vessels, which though ever so clean and commodious, they cannot drink out of, and that by reason of some accidental ideas which are annexed to them, and make them offensive and who is there that hath not observed some man to flag at the appearance, or in the company of some certain person not otherwise superior to him, but because having once on some occasion got the ascendant, the idea of authority and distance goes along with that of the person, and he that has been thus subjected, is not able to separate them?

:

§. 16. Instances of this kind are so plentiful every: where, that if I add one more, it is only for the pleasant oddness of it. It is of a young gentleman, who having learnt to dance, and that to great perfection, there happened to stand an old trunk in the room where

Ch. 33.

Of the Association of Ideas.

425.

where he learnt. The idea of this remarkable piece of houshold-stuff had so mixed itself with the turns and steps of all his dances, that though in that chamber he could dance excellently well, yet it was only whilst that trunk was there; nor could he perform well in any other place, unless that or some such other trunk had its due position in the room. If this story shall be suspected to be dressed up with some comical circumstances, a little beyond precise nature; I answer for myself that I had it some years since from a very sober and worthy man, upon his own knowledge, as I report it : and I dare say, there are very few inquisitive persons, who read this, who have not met with accounts, if not examples of this nature, that may parallel, or at least justify this.+

Its influence

on intellec-
tual habits.

§. 17. Intellectual habits and defects this way contracted, are not less frequent and powerful, though less observed. Let the ideas of being and matter be strongly joined either by education or much thought, whilst these are still combined in the mind, what notions, what reasonings will there be about separate spirits? Let custom from the very childhood have joined figure and shape to the idea of God, and what absurdities will that mind be liable to about the Deity?

Let the idea of infallibility be inseparably joined to any person, and these two constantly together possess the mind; and then one body, in two places at once, shall unexamined, be swallowed for a certain truth, by an implicit faith, whenever that imagined infallible person dictates and demands assent without inquiry. §. 18. Some such wrong and unnatural combinations of ideas will be found to establish the irreconcilable opposition between different sects of philosophy and religion;

Observable
in different
sects.

for we cannot imagine every one of their followers to impose wilfully on himself, and knowingly refuse truth offered by plain reason. Interest, though it does a great deal in the case, yet cannot be thought to work whole societies of men to so universal a perverseness, as that every one of them to a man should knowingly main

tain

tain falshood: some at least must be allowed to do what all pretend to, i. e. to pursue truth sincerely; and therefore there must be something that blinds their understandings, and makes them not see the falshood of what they embrace for real truth. That which thus captivates their reasons, and leads men of sincerity blindfold from common sense, will, when examined, be found to be what we are speaking of: some independent ideas, of no alliance to one another, are by education, custom, and the constant din of their party, so coupled in their minds, that they always appear there together; and they can no more separate them in their thoughts, than if there were but one idea, and they operate as if they were so. This gives sense to jargon, demonstration to absurdities, and consistency to nonsense, and is the foundation of the greatest, I had almost said of all the errours in the world; or if it does not reach so far, it is at least the most dangerous one, since so far as it obtains, it hinders men from seeing and examining. When two things in themselves disjoined, appear to the sight constantly united; if the eye sees these things riveted, which are loose, where will you begin to rectify the mistakes that follow in two ideas, that they have been accustomed so to join in their minds, as to substitute one for the other, and, as I am apt to think, often without perceiving it themselves? This, whilst they are under the deceit of it, makes them incapable of conviction, and they applaud themselves as zealous champions for truth, when indeed they are contending for errour; and the confusion of two different ideas, which a customary connexion of them in their minds hath to them made in effect but one, fills their heads with false views, and their reasonings with false consequences. §. 19. Having thus given an account of the original, sorts, and extent of our ideas, with several other considerations, about these (I know not whether I may say) instruments or materials of our knowledge; the method I at first proposed to myself would now require, that I should immediately proceed to show what use the understanding makes of them, and what knowledge we have by them. This was that

Conclusion.