ASSOCIATIONS WITH USES. 549 between each of them and the idea of the time, namely, the fifth century before Christ. In the case of some, this link might be strong enough of itself; with others a second link might be requisite, as for example, their profession. With the idea of a sculptor entering into the composition, we should recal Phidias, with a painter Praxiteles, with a philosopher Anaxagoras. Our historical memory is very often helped after this fashion. Persons are brought more or less frequently before our view, and are made links in our trains of thought, according as we are liable to encounter the various accompaniments of their life. If we pass every day by a particular dwelling the tenant comes readily to mind; if in addition we have to think frequently of the same individual's calling, as the chief of some business department which we have many dealings with, such an one will engross a large share of our thinking currents and permanent regards. 4 The connexion of things with uses is a source of multiple bonds. A tool, a building, the materials of food, clothing, &c., everything that comes into the market as a useful commodity, an army, or a fleet,-all such things have besides their appearance, locality, ownership, &c., a distinct end to serve, whence arises a powerful bond of association. I am unable to remember the objects that I have seen in a certain shop, by virtue solely of their association with the shop, and with contiguous things that I do remember, one course open to me would be to run over in my mind a list of utilities to be answered, in which list I should bring up one or more uses of the forgotten things, and this new bond co-operating would be sure to recover some of those from their oblivious condition. To carry away a full recollection of the contents of a manufactory that I have visited, I should find it necessary to aid the association of contiguity of place and succession, with the various ends or utilities that were to be supplied. In recalling the details of a printing-office that I have been seeing, I forget the operation of wetting the paper; I chance, however, to get into my hand a newly printed sheet, and the wetness adds its suggesting power to the other contiguities, and I bring to mind the manual operation for imparting the effect. In the natural sciences, the material objects of the world are looked upon as having many properties, useful or not; these are ascertained by observation and experiment, and are recorded as part of the description of the several substances. In this way everything suffers an ideal expansion or aggrandisement in the mind; the connexions of things, or the threads that give us our hold of them, are multiplied. The substance, silica, in the mind of a naturalist, has a vast range of associations in consequence of the many properties entering into his notion of it. These various links tend to bring the substance repeatedly before the mind; sometimes one link is sufficiently powerful, for example, the recollection of a given degree of hardness; at other times the material is recovered by double or triple connexions, as the ideas of an oxide, of insolubility, and of a six-sided crystallization. The scientific man's memory is constantly liable to be aided by the multiplication of bonds individually too feeble to bring about the recollection of a forgotten object. In invention, as in the search for a device to answer some new end, the mind must go over catalogues of objects according to many kinds of contiguity, including the most casual connexions, in order to bring forward a large field for selection. 5. Successions. I have dwelt at length, in a previous chapter, on the contiguous association of successions of various kinds. Here, too, in the case of imperfect adhesion, the recovery may be due to a composite action. I have witnessed a series of events, and these are in consequence associated in my mind. In endeavouring to recal the series from the commencement, a link fails, and the recovery is arrested until some other association, such as place, or person, contribute a thread in aid of the defective link. Very often, indeed, the auxiliary bond is of itself strong enough to effect a revival single-handed; this would not be an instance of the principle now under consideration. There is one succession that contains the whole of our past AIDS TO THE LINK OF ORDER IN TIME. 551 experience, that is the Order of Time, or the sequence of events in each one's own history. If all the minutiae of this succession were to cohere perfectly in the mind, everything that we have ever done, seen, or been cognizant of, could be recovered by means of it. But, although all the larger transactions and the more impressive scenes of our personal history are linked in this order with a sufficient firmness, yet for smaller incidents the bond is too weak. I cannot remember fully my yesterday's train of thoughts; nor repeat verbatim an address of five minutes' length, whether spoken or heard. Things related in the order of time are strictly speaking experienced only once, and we almost always require repetition to fix any mental train. It constantly happens therefore that we are in search of some reinforcing connexion to help us in recovering the stream of events as they occurred in the order of time. We seek for other conjunctions and successions to enable us to recommence after every break. Experience teaches us that the only way of making up a defective adhesion is to compass in our minds some other connexion, or to get at the missing object through a different door. The inability to recollect the next occurring particular of a train that we are in want of stimulates a great effort of volition, and the true course for the mind to take is to get upon some other chain or stream that is likely to cross the line of the first near the break. We are probably unable to say which succession will answer best for this end, and we therefore try several, one after the other. Sometimes by sticking with energy upon the last link remembered, the mental force may be exalted by excitement, and by this means the recovery may take place. It is, however, difficult to say whether this exalting effect of excitement can ever count for much. The other method, though slow and protracted, is the more likely. If I wish to remember all the incidents of a long and eventful day, I must be indebted in a very great degree to composite connexions. At every moment of life each person stands immersed in a complicated scene, and each object of this scene may become a starting point for a train of recollections. All the internal feelings of the body; everything that surrounds us and strikes the eye, ear, touch, taste, or smell; all the ideas, emotions, and purposes occupying the mind;-these form so many beginnings of trains of association passing far away in the remotest regions of recollection and thought; and we have it in our power to stop and change the direction as often as we please. From some one of these present things we must commence our outgoings towards the absent and the distant, whether treading in single routes, or using the aid that composite action can bestow. 6. Language. The recal of names by things and of things by names give in both cases occasion for bringing in additional links to aid a feeble tie. When we have forgotten the name of a person or of an object, we are under the necessity of referring back to the situation and circumstances where we have heard the name to see if any other bond of connexion will spring up. Very often we are unable at the time to recover the lost sound by any means; but a short time afterwards an auxiliary circumstance crosses the view, and the recollection strikes us of its own accord. Many of our recollections, thoughts, conceptions and imaginings are an inextricable mixture of language and visible pictures. The notions that we acquire through oral instruction or from books are made up in part by the subject matter purely, and in part by the phraseology that conveyed it. Thus my recollection of a portion of history is made up of the train of words and the train of historical facts and scenes as I might have seen them with my own eyes. So in many sciences, there is a combination of visible or tangible notions with terms or language. Geometry is a compound of visible diagrams with the language of definitions, axioms, and demonstrations. Now in all these cases recollection may turn either on the associations of words, or on those of visible and other conceptions, or on a compound of both. If I listen to a geographical description, there is in the first place a train of words dropping on my ear; and by virtue of a perfect verbal cohesion I might recal the whole description and recite it to another party. In the second place, there is a series of views of MULTIPLICATION OF POINTS OF LIKENESS. 553 objects, of mountain, river, plain, and forest, which I picture in my mind and retain independently of the language used to suggest them. Were my pictorial adhesion strong enough I could recal the whole of the features in the order that I was made to conceive them and leave aside the language. The common case, however, is that the recollection is made out of a union of both the threads of cohesion; the pictorial train is assisted by the verbal, and the verbal by the pictorial as may be required. COMPOSITION OF SIMILARITIES. 7. The effect of the multiplication of points of likeness in securing the revival of a past object is liable to no uncertainty. It is only an extension of the principle maintained all through the discussion of the law of similarity, that the greater the similitude and the more numerous the points of resemblance, the surer is the stroke of recal. If I meet a person very like some one else I have formerly known, the probability of my recalling this last person to view is increased, if the likeness in face and feature is combined with similarity of dress, of speech, of gait, or of any still more extraneous points, such as occupation, or history. Increase of resemblance extensively, that is by outward connexions, has the same power as increase of resemblance intensively, in rendering the restoration of the past more certain. It might admit of a doubt whether four faint links of contiguous adhesion would be equal to one strong, but it would be against our whole experience of the workings of similarity to doubt the utility of multiplying faint resemblances when there was no one sufficiently powerful to effect the revival. At the same time we must admit that much more is contributed to the chances of reinstatement by intensifying one point of likeness than by adding new ones of a faint character. By raising some single feature almost up to the point of identity we should do more good than could be done by scattering faint and detached likenesses over the picture. This, however, is not always in our power; and we are fain to acknowledge that when the similarity in any one particular is too feeble to suggest the resembling past, the |