objects, not of psychic phenomena, has the merit of avoiding, or of ignoring, the most dangerous pitfalls of the argument; and one is sorely tempted to restrain the discussion within the limits marked out by the assertion that things, not thoughts, are associated. But it is difficult to think very clearly or very long with the assumption that things are independent, extramental objects, completely separate from consciousness; and yet only some such implication gives this theory its air of common-sense reality. Besides, if one insist on limiting association to things, one falls into the error involved in the last part of the expression, "association of ideas." There may be associated emotions or associated feelings-of-effort, as well as associated cognitions; and an emotion is too subtle to be bound down to a "thing." Dr. Scripture's experiments in association[1] prove that the perception of an object may be followed by the vaguest sort of emotion, unlinked to any definite cognition.
A second error, imbedded in the ordinary classification, is its tendency to include under association undoubted facts of consciousness, which nevertheless are not aspects of association. This mistake may be traced to the altered theory, held by later psychologists, concerning association by similarity, which they treat as synonymous with the assumed identity of a present with a past object of consciousness.[2] If this were association by similarity, it would properly be called, as by Mill by Spencer and by Bain, the basal sort from which all other kinds are derived. But the fact is that the relation involved is one of the identity, not of the similarity, of the earlier and the later objects of consciousness; and identity, whatever the sense in which it is true of phenomena of consciousness, is not association.
Truth to tell, we cannot well define association nor classify its varying cases unless we clearly recognize what we do not mean by the term. Association presupposes succession and recurrence, but association is neither one. Association may
