Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/111

ings and imaginations which have been passing in his mind at the time. This last observation may be objected to on the ground that there is no connection whatever between one man's ideas and another's. No doubt: but then it follows as clearly (and that is all I meant to shew) that the abstract identity of the objects or impressions does not of itself produce this connection, so that the perception of the one must needs bring along with it the associated ideas belonging to the other. The objects or ideas are the same in both cases, if that were all: but this is not sufficient to prove that they must have the same accompaniments, or associations, because in the one case they are impressed on different minds, and in the other on the same mind at different times, which is expressly contrary to the principle of association, unless we assume by the help of a verbal sophism that the same generical idea is the same associated idea, and this again would lead to the absurd consequence above stated. It is not here necessary to give a regular definition or account of what in general constitutes sameness; or to inquire whether, strictly speaking, such a relation can ever be said to subsist between any two assignable objects. Such an inquiry would be quite foreign to the purpose, and I wish to avoid as much as possible all useless common-place subtleties, such as, whichever way they are determined, can make no alteration in the state of the argument. It is plain in the present case, for example; that when it is stated that a particular idea having been once associated with given circumstances, the same idea will ever afterwards excite the recollection of those circumstances, all that is meant is that the idea in the latter case must be a production, continuation, or more properly a recollection of the former one, so as to retain the impression of the accidental modifications by which that idea was originally