In the first place it can be said that the connection of the things present simultaneously in a single conscious act is made from each member to its immediate successor but not to members further distant. This connection is in some way inhibited by the presence of intermediate members, but not by the interposition of pauses, provided that the beginning and end of the pause can be grasped in one act of consciousness. Thereby return is made to the facts, but the advantage which the whole plausible appeal to the unitary act of consciousness offered is silently abandoned. For, however much contention there may be over the number of ideas which a single conscious act may comprehend, it is quite certain that, if not always, at least in most cases, we include more than two members of a series in any one conscious act. If use is made of one feature of the explanation, the characteristic of unity, as a welcome factor, the other side, the manifoldness of the members, must be reckoned with, and the right of representation must not be denied it on assumed but unstatable grounds. Otherwise, we have only said,—and it is possible that we will have to be content with that—that it is so because there are reasons for its being so.
There is, consequently, the temptation to use this second form of statement. The ideas which are conceived in one act of consciousness are, it is true, all bound together, but not in the same way. The strength of the union is, rather, a decreasing function of the time or of the number of intervening members. It is therefore smaller in proportion as the interval which separates the individual members is greater. Let a, b, c, d be a series which has been presented in a single conscious act, then the connection of a with b is stronger than that of a with the later c; and the latter again is stronger than that with d. If a is in any way reproduced, it brings with it b and c and d, but b, which is bound to it more closely, must arise more easily and quickly than c, which is closely bound to b, etc. The series must therefore reappear in consciousness in its original form although all the members of it are connected with each other.
Such a view as this has been logically worked out by Herbart. He sees the basis of the connection of immediately successive ideas not directly in the unity of the conscious act, but in something similar: opposed ideas which are forced together in a
