Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/180

ON ' ASSOCIATION '-CONTEOVEESIES. 167 to try again till we have corrected the mistake, and feel satisfied that we are at length correct. Let me next advert to Mr. Bradley's view of the con- sciousness of identity without recovery of the identified image. He says : "If anything is brought up which suggests agreement, then this must involve what is called contiguity. For apart from such contiguity there would be nothing to recognise." But I humbly think this is to mis-state the order of occurrence. We do not first bring a thing up, not knowing whether it is like or not like, and then examine it to see if there be any likeness. Of course, this would involve Contiguity, and an occult principle besides, namely, a power of bringing up on suspicion, without anything to go upon at all ; a mere tentative restoration, to be verified after it is brought into full view. There is no such power as this, so far as my knowledge goes. If something present to the view recalls a past thing like it, it is because of the felt resem- blance. However we may express it, this is the order of proceeding. We have laid up in our previous experience some fact, appearance, notion, image ; we, at the present moment, have in view some fact that was never in conti- guity with the former but possesses a certain amount of resemblance to that : the immediate consequence is that the previous fact is recalled ; the stroke of recall being, as it seems to me, simple and ultimate, and not resolvable into any roundabout process or succession of mental movements. Mr. Ward's explanation of similarity in diversity is the easiest to state. His opinion is that when abx recalls dby, there is no more similarity than when dbc recalls def. Now whether there be more or less similarity is scarcely the point; there is similarity in both to the extent of the common ele- ment db. But there is certainly a difference in the two situations, a parting of the ways, with the most widely different results. And even in the immediate act there is an assignable difference. The combination ale recalls the former residua of dbc that were in contiguity with def: there is no halt or hesitation in the matter. But when it is a question of abx bringing up dby, aggregates that were never in contiguity before, there is a new condition present. For, just as the ab in the one group tends to strike into the previous trace of db in the other, the x in the first works by similarity on its own account, and tends to strike into a previous residuum containing x ; and it is an open question which one of three courses will be taken, the recall, namely, of dby, or of a group nox, or of nothing at all. The mind has a new mode of consciousness under this situation ; we