selection is made, owing to the familiarity of the ways in which spontaneous redintegration runs, gives the process of reasoning the appearance of evoking images that are foreseen to be conformable to the purpose. There is no seeing them before they are offered; there is no summoning them before they are seen. The other circumstance is, that every kind of reasoning is nothing, in its simplest form, but attention."[489] It is foreign to our purpose here to enter into any detailed analysis of the different classes of mental pursuit. In a scientific research we get perhaps as rich an example as can be found. The inquirer starts with a fact of which he seeks the reason, or with an hypothesis of which he seeks the proof. In either case he keeps turning the matter incessantly in his mind until, by the arousal of associate upon associate, some habitual, some similar, one arises which he recognizes to suit his need. This, however, may take years. No rules can be given by which the investigator may proceed straight to his result; but both here and in the case of reminiscence the accumulation of helps in the way of associations may advance more rapidly by the use of certain routine methods. In striving to recall a thought, for example, we may of set purpose run through the successive classes of circumstance with which it may possibly have been connected, trusting that when the right member of the class has turned up it will help the thought's revival. Thus we may run through all the _places_ in which we may have had it. We may run through the _persons_ whom we remember to have conversed with, or we may call up successively all the _books_ we have lately been reading. If we are trying to remember a person we may run through a list of streets or of professions. Some item out of the lists thus methodically gone over will very likely be associated with the fact we are in need of, and may suggest it or help to do so. And yet the item might never have arisen without such systematic procedure. In scientific research this accumulation of associates has been methodized by Mill under the title of 'The Four Methods of Experimental Inquiry.'
By the 'method of agreement,' by that of 'difference,' by those of 'residues' and 'concomitant variations'(which cannot here be more nearly defined), we make certain lists of cases; and by ruminating these lists in our minds the cause we seek will be more likely to emerge. But the final stroke of discovery is only prepared, not effected, by them. The brain-tracts must, of their own accord, shoot the right way at last, or we shall still grope in darkness. That in some brains the tracts _do_ shoot the right way much oftener than in others, and that we cannot tell why,--these are ultimate facts to which we must never close our eyes. Even in forming our lists of instances according to Mill's methods, we are at the mercy of the spontaneous workings of Similarity in our brain. How are a number of facts, resembling the one whose cause we seek, to be brought together in a list unless the one will rapidly suggest the other through association by similarity?
SIMILARITY NO ELEMENTARY LAW.
Such is the analysis I propose, first of the three main types of spontaneous association, and then of voluntary association. It will be observed that the _object called up may bear any logical relation whatever to the one which suggested it_. The law requires only that one condition should be fulfilled. The fading object must be due to a brain-process some of whose elements awaken through habit some of the elements of the brain-process of the object which comes to view. This awakening is the operative machinery, the causal agency, throughout, quite as much so in the kind of association I have called by the name of Similarity, as in any other sort. The similarity between the objects, or between the thoughts (if similarity there be between these latter), has no causal agency in carrying us from one to the other. It is but a result--the effect of the usual causal agent when this happens to work in a certain particular and assignable way. But ordinary writers talk as if the similarity of the objects were itself an agent, co-ordinate with habit, and independent of it, and like it able to push objects before the mind. This is quite unintelligible. The similarity of two things does not exist till both things are there--it is meaningless to talk of it as an _agent of production_ of anything, whether in the physical or the psychical realms.[490] It is a relation which the mind perceives after the fact, just as it may perceive the relations of superiority, of distance, of causality, of container and content, of substance and accident, or of contrast, between an object and some second object which the associative machinery calls up.[491] There are, nevertheless, able writers who not only insist on preserving association by similarity as a distinct elementary law, but who make it the most elementary law, and seek to derive contiguous association from it. Their reasoning is as follows: When the present impression A awakens the idea _b_ of its past contiguous associate B, how can this occur except through first reviving an image _a_ of its own past occurrence. _This_ is the term directly connected with _b_; so that the process instead of being simply A--_b_ is A--_a--b_. Now A and _a_ are similars; therefore no association by contiguity can occur except through a previous association by similarity. The most important supposition here made is that every impression on entering the mind must needs awaken an image of its past self, in the light of which it is 'apperceived' or understood, and through the intermediation of which it enters into relation with the mind's other objects. This assumption is almost universally made; and yet it is hard to find any good reason for it. It first came before us when we were reviewing the facts of aphasia and mental blindness (see p. 50 ff.). But we then saw no need of optical and auditory images to interpret optical and auditory sensations by. On the contrary, we agreed that auditory sensations were understood by us only so far as they awakened _non_-auditory images, and optical sensations only so far as they awakened _non_-optical images. In the chapters on Memory, on Reasoning, and on Perception the same assumption will meet us again, and again will have to be rejected as groundless. The sensational process A and the ideational process _a_ probably occupy essentially the same tracts. When the outer stimulus comes and those tracts vibrate with the sensation A, they discharge as directly into the paths which lead to B as when there is no outer stimulus and they only vibrate with the idea _a_. To say that the process A can only reach these paths by the help of the weaker process _a_ is like saying that we need a candle to see the sun by. A replaces _a_, does all that _a_ does and more; and there is no intelligible meaning, to my mind, in saying that the weaker process coexists with the stronger. I therefore consider that these writers are altogether wrong. The only plausible proof they give of the coexistence of _a_ with A is when A gives us a _sense of familiarity_ but fails to awaken any distinct thought of past contiguous associates. In a later chapter I shall consider this case. Here I content myself with saying that it does not seem conclusive as to the point at issue; and that I still believe association of coexistent or sequent impressions to be the one _elementary_ law.
* * * * * CONTRAST _has also been held to be an independent agent in association._ But the reproduction of an object contrasting with one already in the mind is easily explained on our principles. Recent writers, in fact, all reduce it either to similarity or contiguity.
Contrast always presupposes generic similarity; it is only the _extremes of a class_ which are contrasted, black and white, not black and sour, or white and prickly. A machinery which reproduces a similar at all, may reproduce the _opposite_ similar, as well as any intermediate term. Moreover, the greater number of contrasts are habitually coupled in speech, young and old, life and death, rich and poor, etc., and are, as Dr. Bain says, in everybody's memory.[492] * * * * * I trust that the student will now feel that the way to a deeper understanding of the order of our ideas lies in the direction of cerebral physiology. The _elementary_ process of revival can be nothing but the law of habit. Truly the day is distant when physiologists shall actually trace from cell-group to cell-group the irradiations which we have hypothetically invoked. Probably it will never arrive.
The schematism we have used is, moreover, taken immediately from the analysis of objects into their elementary parts, and only extended by analogy to the brain. And yet it is only as incorporated in the brain that such a schematism can represent anything _causal_. This is, to my mind, the conclusive reason for saying that the order of _presentation of the mind's materials_ is due to cerebral physiology alone.
The law of accidental prepotency of certain processes over others falls also within the sphere of cerebral probabilities. Granting such instability as the brain-tissue requires, certain points must always discharge more quickly and strongly than others; and this prepotency would shift its place from moment to moment by accidental causes, giving us a perfect mechanical diagram of the capricious play of similar association in the most gifted mind. The study of dreams confirms this view. The usual abundance of paths of irradiation seems, in the dormant brain, reduced. A few only are pervious, and the most fantastic sequences occur because the currents run--'like sparks in burnt-up paper'--wherever the nutrition of the moment creates an opening, but nowhere else.
* * * * * The _effects of interested attention and volition_ remain. These activities seem to hold fast to certain elements, and by emphasizing them and dwelling on them, to make their associates the only ones which are evoked. _This_ is the point at which an anti-mechanical psychology must, if anywhere, make it stand in dealing with association.
Everything else is pretty certainly due to cerebral laws. My own opinion on the question of active attention and spiritual spontaneity is expressed elsewhere. But even though there be a mental spontaneity, it can certainly not create ideas or summon them _ex abrupto_. Its power is limited to _selecting_ amongst those which the associative machinery has already introduced or tends to introduce. If it can emphasize, reinforce, or protract for a second either one of these, it can do all that the most eager advocate of free will need demand; for it then decides the direction of the next associations by making them hinge upon the emphasized term; and determining in this wise the course of the man's thinking, it also determines his acts.
THE HISTORY OF OPINION CONCERNING ASSOCIATION may be briefly glanced at ere we end the chapter.[493] Aristotle seems to have caught both the facts and the principle of explanation; but he did not expand his views, and it was not till the time of Hobbes that the matter was again touched on in a definite way. Hobbes first formulated the problem of the succession of our thoughts. He writes in Leviathan, chapter iii, as follows: "By consequence, or train of thoughts, I understand that succession of one thought to another which is called, to distinguish it from discourse in words, _mental discourse_. When a man thinketh on anything whatsoever, his next thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently. But as we have no imagination, whereof we have not formerly had sense, in whole or in parts; so we have no transition from one imagination to another, whereof we never had the like before in our senses. The reason whereof is this. All fancies are motions within us, relics of those made in the sense: and those motions that immediately succeeded one another in the sense continue also together after sense: insomuch as the former coming again to take place, and be predominant, the latter followeth, by coherence of the matter moved, in such manner, as water upon a plane table is drawn which way any one part of it is guided by the finger. But because in sense, to one and the same thing perceived, sometimes one thing, sometimes another succeedeth, it comes to pass in time that, in the imagining of anything, there is no certainty what we shall imagine next; only this is certain, it shall be something that succeeded the same before, at one time or another. This train of thoughts, or mental discourse, is of two sorts. The first is _unguided, without design,_ and inconstant; wherein there is no passionate thought, to govern and direct those that follow, to itself, as the end and scope of some desire, or other passion...The second is more constant; as being _regulated_ by some desire and design. For the impression made by such things as we desire, or fear, is strong and permanent, or, if it cease for a time, of quick return: so strong is it, sometimes, as to hinder and break our sleep. From desire ariseth the thought of some means we have seen produce the like of that which we aim at; and from the thought of that, the thought of means to that mean; and so continually, till we come to some beginning within our own power. And because the end, by the greatness of the impression, comes often to mind, in case our thoughts begin to wander, they are quickly again reduced into the way: which observed by one of the seven wise men, made him give men this precept, which is now worn out, _Respite finem_; that is to say, in all your actions, look often upon what you would have, as the thing that directs all your thoughts in the way to attain it.
"The train of regulated thoughts is of two kinds; one, when of an effect imagined we seek the causes, or means that produce it: and this is common to man and beast. The other is, when imagining anything whatsoever, we seek all the possible effects that can by it be produced; that is to say, we imagine what we can do with it, when we have it. Of which I have not at any time seen any sign, but in man only; for this is a curiosity hardly incident to the nature of any living creature that has no other passion but sensual, such as are hunger, thirst, lust, and anger. In sum, the discourse of the mind, when it is governed by design, is nothing but _seeking_ or the faculty of invention, which the Latins called _sagacitas_, and _sollertia_; a hunting out of the causes, of some effect, present or past; or of the effects, of some present or past cause."
The most important passage after this of Hobbes is Hume's: "As all simple ideas may be separated by the imagination, and may be united again in what form it pleases, nothing would be more unaccountable than the operations of that faculty, were it not guided by some universal principles, which render it, in some measure, uniform with itself in all times and places. Were ideas entirely loose and unconnected, chance alone would join them; and 'tis impossible the same simple ideas should fall regularly into complex ones (as they commonly do) without some bond of union among them, some associating quality, by which one idea naturally introduces another. This uniting principle among ideas is not to be considered as an inseparable connection; for that has been already excluded from the imagination.
Nor yet are we to conclude that without it the mind cannot join two ideas; for nothing is more free than that faculty: but we are only to regard it as a gentle force, which commonly prevails, and is the cause why, among other things, languages so nearly correspond to each other; nature in a manner pointing to every one those simple ideas which are most proper to be united in a complex one. The qualities from which this association arises, and by which the mind is after this manner conveyed from one idea to another, are three, viz., RESEMBLANCE, CONTIGUITY in time or place, and CAUSE and EFFECT.
"I believe it will not be very necessary to prove that these qualities produce an association among ideas, and upon the appearance of one idea naturally introduce another. 'Tis plain that in the course of our thinking, and in the constant revolution of our ideas, our imagination runs easily from one idea to any other that _resembles_ it, and that this quality alone is to the fancy a sufficient bond and association.
'Tis likewise evident, that as the senses, in changing their objects, are necessitated to change them regularly, and take them as they lie _contiguous_ to each other, the imagination must by long custom acquire the same method of thinking, and run along the parts of space and time in conceiving its objects. As to the connection that is made by the relation of _cause and effect_, we shall have occasion afterwards to examine it to the bottom, and therefore shall not at present insist upon it. 'Tis sufficient to observe that there is no relation which produces a stronger connection in the fancy, and makes one idea more readily recall another, than the relation of cause and effect betwixt their objects...These are therefore the principles of union or cohesion among our simple ideas, and in the imagination supply the place of that inseparable connection by which they are united in our memory. Here is a kind of ATTRACTION, which in the mental world will be found to have as extraordinary effects as in the natural, and to show itself in as many and as various forms. Its effects are everywhere conspicuous; but as to its causes, they are mostly unknown, and must be resolved into _original_ qualities of human nature, which I pretend not to explain."[494] Hume did not, however, any more than Hobbes, follow out the effects of which he speaks, and the task of popularizing the notion of association and making an effective school based on association of ideas alone was reserved for Hartley[495] and James Mill.[496] These authors traced minutely the presence of association in all the cardinal notions and operations of the mind. The several 'faculties' of the Mind were dispossessed; the one principle of association between ideas did all their work. As Priestley says: "Nothing is requisite to make any man whatever he is, but a sentient principle with this single law...Not only all our intellectual pleasures and pains but all the phenomena of memory, imagination, volition, reasoning and every other mental affection and operation, are but different modes or cases of the association of ideas."[497] An eminent French psychologist, M. Ribot, repeats Hume's comparison of the law of association with that of gravitation, and goes on to say: "It is remarkable that this discovery was made so late. Nothing is simpler, apparently, than to notice that this law of association is the truly fundamental, irreducible phenomenon of our mental life; that it is at the bottom of all our acts; that it permits of no exception; that neither dream, revery, mystic ecstasy, nor the most abstract reasoning can exist without it; that its suppression would be equivalent to that of thought itself. Nevertheless no ancient author understood it, for one cannot seriously maintain that a few scattered lines in Aristotle and the Stoics constitute a theory and clear view of the subject. It is to Hobbes, Hume, and Hartley that we must attribute the origin of these studies on the connection of our ideas.
The discovery of the ultimate law of our psychologic acts has this, then, in common with many other discoveries: it came late and seems so simple that it may justly astonish us.
"Perhaps it is not superfluous to ask in what this manner of explanation is superior to the current theory of Faculties.[498] The most extended usage consists, as we know, in dividing intellectual phenomena into classes, in separating those which differ, in grouping together those of the same nature and in giving to these a common name and in attributing them to the same cause; it is thus that we have come to distinguish those diverse aspects of intelligence which are called judgment, reasoning, abstraction, perception, etc. This method is precisely the one followed in Physics, where the words caloric, electricity, gravity, designate the unknown causes of certain groups of phenomena. If one thus never forgets that the diverse faculties are only the unknown causes of known phenomena, that they are simply a convenient means of classifying the facts and speaking of them, if one does not fall into the common fault of making out of them substantial entities, creations which now agree, now disagree, so forming in the intelligence a little republic; then, we can see nothing reprehensible in this distribution into faculties, conformable as it is to the rules of a sound method and of a good natural classification. In what then is Mr. Bain's procedure superior to the method of the faculties?
It is that the latter is simply a _classification_ while his is an _explanation_. Between the psychology which traces intellectual facts back to certain faculties, and that which reduces them to the single law of association, there is, according to our way of thinking, the same difference that we find in Physics between those who attribute its phenomena to five or six causes, and those who derive gravity caloric, light, etc., from motion. The system of the faculties explains nothing because each one of them is only a _flatus vocis_ which is of value merely through the phenomena which it contains, and signifies nothing more than these phenomena. The new theory, on the contrary, shows that the different processes of intelligence are only diverse cases of a single law; that imagination, deduction, induction, perception, etc., are but so many determinate ways in which ideas may combine with each other; and that the differences of faculties are only differences of association. It _explains_ all intellectual facts, certainly not after the manner of Metaphysics which demands the ultimate and absolute reason of things; but after the manner of Physics which seeks only their secondary and immediate cause."[499] The inexperienced reader may be glad of a brief indication of the manner in which all the different mental operations may be conceived to consist of images of sensation associated together.
_Memory_ is the association of a present image with others known to belong to the past. _Expectation_ the same, with future substituted for past. _Fancy_, the association of images without temporal order.
_Belief_ in anything _not_ present to sense is the very lively, strong, and steadfast association of the image of that thing with some present sensation, so that as long as the sensation persists the image cannot be excluded from the mind.
_Judgment_ is 'transferring the idea of _truth_ by association from one proposition to another that resembles it.'[500] _Reasoning_ is the perception that "whatever has any mark has that which it is a mark of"; in the concrete case the mark or middle term being always _associated_ with each of the other terms and so serving as a link by which they are themselves indirectly associated together.
This same kind of transfer of a sensible experience associated with another to a third also associated with that other, serves to explain emotional facts. When we are pleased or hurt we express it, and the expression associates itself with the feeling. Hearing the same expression from another revives the associated feeling, and we _sympathize_, i.e. grieve or are glad with him.
The other social affections, _Benevolence, Conscientiousness, Ambition,_ etc., arise in like manner by the transfer of the bodily pleasure experienced as a reward for social service, and hence associated with it, to the act of service itself, the link of reward being dropped out. Just so _Avarice_ when the miser transfers the bodily pleasures associated with the spending of money to the money itself, dropping the link of spending.
_Fear_ is a transfer of the bodily hurt associated by experience with the thing feared, to the thought of the thing, with the precise features of the hurt left out. Thus we fear a dog without distinctly imagining his bite.
_Love_ is the association of the agreeableness of certain sensible experiences with the idea of the object capable of affording them.
The experiences themselves may cease to be distinctly imagined after the notion of their pleasure has been transferred to the object, constituting our love therefor.
_Volition_ is the association of ideas of muscular motion with the ideas of those pleasures which the motion produces. The motion at first occurs automatically and results in a pleasure unforeseen. The latter becomes so associated with the motion that whenever we think of it the idea of the motion arises; and the idea of the motion when vivid causes the motion to occur. This is an act of will.
Nothing is easier than for a philosopher of this school to explain from experience such a notion as that of infinitude.
"He sees in it an ordinary manifestation of one of the laws of the association of ideas,--the law that the idea of a thing irresistibly suggests the idea of any other thing which has been often experienced in close conjunction with it, and not otherwise. As we have never had experience of any point of space without other points beyond it, nor of any point of time without others following it, the law of indissoluble association makes it impossible for us to think of any point of space or time, however distant, without having the idea irresistibly realized, in imagination, of other points still more remote. And thus the supposed original and inherent property of these two ideas is completely explained and accounted for by the law of association; and we are enabled to see that if Space or Time were really susceptible of termination, we should be just as unable as we now are to conceive the idea."[501] These examples of the Associationist Psychology are with the exception of the last, very crudely expressed, but they suffice for our temporary need. Hartley and James Mill[502] improved upon Hume so far as to employ but a single principle of association, that of contiguity or habit. Hartley ignores resemblance, James Mill expressly repudiates it in a passage which is assuredly one of the curiosities of literature: "I believe it will be found that we are accustomed to see like things together. When we see a tree, we generally see more trees than one; a sheep, more sheep than one; a man, more men than one. From this observation, I think, we may refer resemblance to the law of frequency [i.e., contiguity], of which it seems to form only a particular case."
Mr. Herbert Spencer has still more recently tried to construct a Psychology which ignores Association by Similarity,[503] and in a chapter, which also is a curiosity, he tries to explain the association of two ideas by a conscious reference of the first to the point of time when its sensation was experienced, which point of time is no sooner thought of than its content, namely, the second idea, arises. Messrs. Bain and Mill, however, and the immense majority of contemporary psychologists retain both Resemblance and Contiguity as irreducible principles of Association.
Professor Bain's exposition of association is by common consent looked upon as the best expression of the English school. Perception of agreement and difference, retentiveness, and the two sorts of association, contiguity and similarity, are by him regarded as constituting all that is meant by intellect proper. His pages are painstaking and instructive from a descriptive point of view; though, after my own attempt to deal with the subject causally, I can hardly award to them any profound _explanatory_ value. Association by Similarity, too much neglected by the British school before Bain, receives from him the most generous exemplification. As an instructive passage, the following, out of many equally good, may be chosen to quote: "We may have similarity in form with diversity of use, and similarity of use with diversity of form. A rope suggests other ropes and cords, if we look to the appearance; but looking to the _use_, it may suggest an iron cable, a wooden prop, an iron girding, a leather band, or bevelled gear. In spite of diversity of appearance, the suggestion turns on what answers a common end. If we are very much attracted by sensible appearances, there will be the more difficulty in recalling things that agree only in the use; if, on the other hand, we are profoundly sensitive to the one point of practical efficiency as a tool, the peculiarities not essential to this will be little noticed, and we shall be ever ready to revive past objects corresponding in use to some one present, although diverse in all other circumstances. We become oblivious to the difference between a horse, a steam-engine, and a waterfall, when our minds are engrossed with the one circumstance of moving power. The diversity in these had no doubt for a long time the effect of keeping back their first identification; and to obtuse intellects, this identification might have been for ever impossible. A strong concentration of mind upon the single peculiarity of mechanical force, and a degree of indifference to the general aspect of the things themselves, must conspire with the intellectual energy of resuscitation by similars, in order to summon together in the view three structures so different. We can see, by an instance like this, how new adaptations of existing machinery might arise in the mind of a mechanical inventor. When it first occurred to a reflecting mind that moving water had a property identical with human or brute force, namely, the property of setting other masses in motion, overcoming inertia and resistance,--when the sight of the stream suggested through this point of likeness the power of the animal,--a new addition was made to the class of prime movers, and when circumstances permitted, this power could become a substitute for the others. It may seem to the modern understanding, familiar with water-wheels and drifting rafts, that the similarity here was an extremely obvious one. But if we put ourselves back into an early state of mind, when running water affected the mind by its brilliancy, its roar, and irregular devastation, we may easily suppose that to identify this with animal muscular energy was by no means an obvious effect. Doubtless when a mind arose, insensible by natural constitution to the superficial aspects of things, and having withal a great stretch of identifying intellect, such a comparison would then be possible. We may pursue the same example one stage further, and come to the discovery of steam power, or the identification of expanding vapor with the previously known sources of mechanical force. To the common eye, for ages, vapor presented itself as clouds in the sky; or as a hissing noise at the spout of a kettle, with the formation of a foggy curling cloud at a few inches' distance. The forcing up of the lid of a kettle may also have been occasionally observed. But how long was it ere any one was struck with the parallelism of this appearance with a blast of wind, a rush of water, or an exertion of animal muscle? The discordance was too great to be broken through by such a faint and limited amount of likeness. In one mind, however, the identification did take place, and was followed out into its consequences. The likeness had occurred to other minds previously, but not with the same results. Such minds must have been in some way or other distinguished above the millions of mankind; and we are now endeavoring to give the explanation of their superiority.
The intellectual character of Watt contained all the elements preparatory to a great stroke of similarity in such a case;--a high susceptibility, both by nature and by education, to the mechanical properties of bodies; ample previous knowledge or familiarity; and indifference to the superficial and sensational effects of things.
It is not only possible, however, but exceedingly probable, that many men possessed all these accomplishments; they are of a kind not transcending common abilities. They would in some degree attach to a mechanical education almost as a matter of course. That the discovery was not sooner made supposes that something farther, and not of common occurrence, was necessary; and this additional endowment appears to be the identifying power of Similarity in general; the tendency to detect likeness in the midst of disparity and disguise. This supposition accounts for the fact, and is consistent with the known intellectual character of the inventor of the steam-engine."[504] Dr. Hodgson's account of association is by all odds the best yet propounded in English.[505] All these writers hold more or less explicitly to the notion of atomistic 'ideas' which recur. In Germany, the same mythological supposition has been more radically grasped, and carried out to a still more logical, if more repulsive, extreme, by Herbart[506] and his followers, who until recently may be said to have reigned almost supreme in their native country.[507] For Herbart each idea is a permanently existing entity, the entrance whereof into consciousness is but an accidental determination of its being. So far as it succeeds in occupying the theatre of consciousness, it crowds out another idea previously there. This act of inhibition gives it, however, a sort of hold on the other representation which on all later occasions facilitates its following the other into the mind. The ingenuity with which most special cases of association are formulated in this mechanical language of struggle and inhibition, is great, and surpasses in analytic thoroughness anything that has been done by the British school. This, however, is a doubtful merit, in a case where the elements dealt with are artificial; and I must confess that to my mind there is something almost hideous in the glib Herbartian jargon about _Vorstellungsmassen_ and their _Hemmungen_ and _Hemmungssummen_, and _sinken_ and _erheben_ and _schweben_, and _Verschmelzungen_ and _Complexionen_. Herr Lipps, the most recent systematic German Psychologist, has, I regret to say, carried out the theory of ideas in a way which the great originality, learning, and acuteness he shows make only the more regrettable.[508] Such elaborately artificial constructions are, it seems to me, only a burden and a hindrance, not a help, to our science.[509] In French, M. Rabier in his chapter on Association,[510] handles the subject more vigorously and acutely than any one. His treatment of it,