b. The connection which always exists between the succeeding, recurrent objects of consciousness (when the second is not an object of perception) is association.
Or II. Persistence.
Or III. Persistence and Succession.
We have virtually recognized, by the definition which has just been given of association, that the fact is an ultimate one, but the manner of this connection demands a closer explanation. The law — that is, the generalized fact — of association is simply this: —
The succeeding objects or partial objects of consciousness,[1] as x1 and x1, are assumed to be respectively identical, with preceding objects or partial objects of consciousness, x and y; and these earlier objects, x and y, have stood to each other in a relation of coexistence or of succession.
The "laws of association" have reduced themselves to this expression of a fundamental fact, but they still must be held to embody some real distinction in the varying cases of association. The characteristic difference which is, in fact, crystallized in these obstinate expressions "contiguity" and "similarity" is perhaps best indicated by Wundt's terms, Intrinsic and Extrinsic Association. This will be admitted, if one return, for the moment, to the every-day, unphilosophical point of view. Certain objects associated are connected in what we call their essential or inner nature; they are externally or accidentally related. Between the white snow and the white rose there is a more intimate relation than between the rose and the bee which lights on it; between Chopin's music and Del Sarto's painting there is a truer, if a subtler, connection than that between the picture and the canvas on which it is painted, or than that between the music and the instrument. It is this latter, external, accidental sort of connection which is called association by contiguity, and the subtler, more intimate sort
- ↑ This formulation retains, for convenience, the term "object of consciousness," which, however, may be replaced throughout by an exacter expression. The "law" may, for example, begin as follows: "The whole or part of the succeeding cognitions, emotions or volitions, x and y, are assumed to be respectively identical (in their permanent relations) . . ."
