Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/178

ON ' ASSOCIATION '-CONTEOVEESIES. 165 see one of the parts or members we are reminded of the entire body or machine. It is thus that Owen reconstructed extinct animals from a few bones. Nay, further, any loose collection or aggregate, if it is persistent and familiar, will be brought to view on our seeing one of the individual objects : as pictures in a gallery, or books in a library, or members of a household. All such would be ordinary ex- amples of the law of Contiguity. But that law is not dependent for its operation on the objects being either united in an organised body, or made up into a grand whole. I imagine that the essence of the law is to couple each thing with the one standing next, and therefore succeeding to it in the view, and to have no regard to the multiplicity needed to make up a collection. The process is not in a state of suspension till we can bring up a sufficient number of things to make a recognised bundle or whole. To say that when I have learned to connect the English word 'king' with the Latin ' rex,' I am proceeding from a part to a whole is to stretch the meaning of part and whole beyond all usage ; to introduce into the conditions of Association an alien circumstance, something never taken into account as a condition of memory. We explain a failure in effective association, by want of frequency, want of attention, or want of plasticity at the time ; not by want of some grand total or collection to place the thing in. The most vagabond or isolated fact can be associated if there be any one obtainable handle. Association needs two things, and needs no more ; yet every assignable couple is not necessarily a whole. I could learn half a sentence without going further. If I were to complete it, the sense would undoubtedly be a help to the memory, but would not vitiate the association of the incom- plete half. More abstruse is the question whether Similarity can fall under Contiguity in any mode of stating it. Of the various attempts to make this resolution, I will advert to the two most recent, the one by Mr. .SVar.d, and the other by Mr. Bxajiley. For my own part, I still adhere to the essential separateness of the two principles ; for although they concur) more or less in actual working, they are the starting-points V of widely different mental movements : the one class going ^f out in the direction of routine or use and wont, the other / > leading to new assemblages of ideas in such forms as classes, / generalities, imaginative comparisons, strokes of practical O invention, and so on. Prof. Groom Kobertson and Mr. Sully concur in the recognition of their distinctness. The position of Mr. Ward, as well as of Mr. Bradley,