§ 5. The school of Experience, in its more consistent de velopment, has turned the metaphorical expression of one fact into a theory which may be said to cover all. It has a doctrine as to the ultimate constituents of mind. They are particular feelings and particular ideas, in either case repellent units. And they have absolutely no internal bond of con nection. There is no ground common to the different units, which could serve as a real basis for their union. Univer sality and identity are derided as fictions. In the procession of these units we may separate two trains, the train of sen sations and the train of ideas; but these all are separate individual realities. " All our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and the mind never perceives any real connection among distinct existences" (Hume). The philosophy of Experience is psychological Atomism.
There is nothing which the atoms possess in common, and there could be no " real connection " between them. They are conjoined by the agency of chance or fate. That im pressions should come to us in a certain arrangement, and should in some cases precede feebler counterparts of them selves — this springs from the unknown necessity of a nature, which we can not say is the nature of the units. And the secondary conjunction of impressions with ideas and of ideas with one another, what is this but the accident of Association, whose laws are nothing but general expressions for certain recurring kinds of irrational combination? Destiny and chance are two names of one lord that sways the procession of fleet ing units. In their short-lived occupation of that void which is the soul, they are combined by the accident of presentation or by the fate of association. And the " final inexplicability " of J. S. Mill may recall an echo of the " free will " of Epikurus.
§ 6. Having thus anticipated by a sweeping theory the nature of everything that is to be experienced, the school for the future, so long as it keeps true to the metaphysical doc trine on which it stands, may call itself the Philosophy of Experience. And it is also analytical 3; for does it not assume that every complex phenomenon of the mind is resolvable into the units which its theory has established? Its first principles no doubt are never analyzed; but analysis, it is obvious, must be broken off somewhere. If the " analytical school " is con tent to stop, then the limit of human thinking has been reached. If the Philosophy of Experience is content with the result, then surely the product of analysis must be fact. Analysis in the future will consist in the attempt to reconstruct syn thetically the phenomena of the mind from elements gained in accordance with first principles, and according to the Laws which first principles have established (cf. Book III. Part I. Chap. VI. §10). It is hardly necessary that in every case the existence of each element should be verified a posteriori. If, for the explanation of visual extension, it were first neces sary to verify in actual observation the fact of colour-sensations devoid of all extension, it is possible that the analysis could not be performed. And, since that analysis has been firmly established, it is clear that its basis can not be unreal.
If we confine ourselves to the limits and the method of the school of Experience, we may be sure of one thing; if we are true to Experience we must be true to fact.
§ 7. We can appreciate now the nature of the claim which is laid to the titles of " experience " and " analysis." But we must hasten to examine the character of those Laws which rule the void and which move ideas. They answer, in the psychical empty space, to what is called " cohesion " or " at traction " in the external void (Hume, Treatise, I. I. 4). The two main principles are the law of Contiguity, and the law of Similarity or Agreement.
I. " Actions, Sensations, and States of Feeling, occurring together or in close succession, tend to grow together, or cohere, in such a way that, when any one of them is after wards presented to the mind, the others are apt to be brought up in idea." Bain, Senses, p. 327.
II. "Present Actions, Sensations, Thoughts, or Emotions tend to revive their LIKE among previous Impressions, or States." Ibid.p.4$7- Or, to put the same thing in the opposite order, laws the first is, that similar ideas tend to excite one another. The second is, that when two impressions have been frequently experienced (or even thought of) either simultaneously or in immediate succession, then whenever one of these impressions, or the idea of it, recurs, it tends to excite the idea of the other." J. S. Mill, Logic, II. p. 44°, Ed. IX.
A briefer, and on the whole more accurate expression, would perhaps be this; Mental units which have co-existed cohere, and mental units which are like recall one ano least in image.
88 In saying that I entirely and utterly reject each one of these statements, I may be taken to deny the existence of fact. But (to repeat once more a distinction I have drawn) what I find it impossible to make myself believe is not fact which these formula may be taken as loosely Beating-It is on the contrary their theory of that fact which I can n swallow And I have no insurmountable objection to the use of such statements; but I can not for one moment allow that they are true.
I shall give hereafter in greater detail those reasons which lead me to believe that these laws are nothing but fictions. But the main ground of objection may be stated at once. The ideas which are recalled according to these laws are particular existences. Individual atoms are the units of asso ciation. And I should maintain, on the contrary, that in all reproduction what operates everywhere is a common identity. No particular ideas are ever associated or ever could be. What is associated is and must be always universal.
It will be found, I think, the most convenient course, if I first give some account of the way in which I conceive association is effected, and then attempt to show that the method, commonly accepted as fact, is wholly fictitious.
§ 9. In the previous Book (p. 34, foil.) I have to some ex tent anticipated this discussion, and, trusting that the result to which we there came may be recalled by the reader, I may perhaps be here allowed to be brief. I have no hope of persuading the orthodox believer, and others may be willing to help in working out the sketch of a doctrine.
The main Law of Reproduction may be laid down thus; Any part of a single state of mind tends, if reproduced, to re-instate the remainder; or Any element tends to reproduce those elements with which it has formed one state of mind. This may be called the law of Redintegration. For we may take this name from Sir W. Hamilton (Reid, p. 897), having found nothing else that we could well take.
There are several points in the formula which call for explanation. We might ask, in the first place, What is a single state of mind? Does it exclude succession? It certainly does not do so. It may be further defined as any psychical com plex which is present together, presence signifying presenta tion, a certain direct relation to the mind which does not imply succession in time. As I have endeavoured (p. 53) to throw some light on the meaning of this term, I must be excused from a further discussion of it here.
In the second place the " parts " of this present state need not be either perceptions or ideas. For the formula includes every possible kind of mental element; and this is the reason why we can not accept the principle as we find it laid down by Wolff and others. I will not here ask, if in the end it is not possible that association is confined to intellectual or perceptive elements (vid. Book III. I. Chap. III. §§20-22). It is better for ordinary purposes to suppose that it also ap plies to desires and feelings. But subject to this correction we may adopt, if we please, Wolff's statement of the law.
" Si quse simul percepimus et unius perceptio denuo producatur, sive sensuum sive imaginationis vi; imaginatio producit et perceptionem alterius — seu quod perinde est — per ceptio praeterita integra recurrit, cujus prsesens continet partem" (Psych. Emp. § 104).
Maas, following Wolff, has thus formulated the principle. " Given an idea or perception, then all those ideas, which be long with it to one total perceptive state, may immediately associate themselves with it, and no other ideas can do so." Or " Every idea, or perception, recalls to the mind its total perceptive context" (Versuch, Verb. Ausg. 1797, § 13).
This law of Redintegration, we must bear in mind, does not exclude any succession of events which comes as a whole before the mind; and it is not to be confined to perceptions and ideas.
§ 10. The law of redintegration is a very different thing from the law of contiguity, as that is understood by the school of Experience. Superficially alike, they are separated by the chasm that divides irreconcilable views of the world. For contiguity is cohesion between psychical units, and its elements are particular existing phenomena. What it couples is the actual individual impression or image, as such. It is not asso ciation between universals. But Redintegration is not any thing else. For it never re-instates the particular fact, can not deal with anything that could be a phenomenon, or could ever exist. It does not couple psychical units, but is entirely confined to what is universal.
We should find it hard to overstate the enormous diver gence of these two interpretations of the fact of association. Contiguity asserts a conjunction between existences, integration asserts a connection between universals, which as such do not exist. What operates in the first is an external relation between individuals. What works in the second is an ideal identity within the individuals. The first deals with the that, and the second with the what. The first unites facts, and the second mere content.
According to the view which to me seems the truth, to talk of an association between psychical particulars is to utter mere nonsense. These particulars in the first place have got no permanence; their life endures for a fleeting moment. In the second place they can never have more than one life; when they are dead they are done with.4 There is no Hades where they wait in disconsolate exile, till Association an nounces resurrection and recall. When the fact is bodily buried in the past, no miracle opens the mouth of the grave and calls up to the light a perished reality, unchanged by the processes that rule in nature. These touching beliefs of a pious legend may babble in the tradition of a senile psychology, or contort themselves in the metaphysics of some frantic dogma, but philosophy must register them and sigh and pass on.
There is nothing we know which can warrant the belief that a particular fact can survive its moment, or that, when it is past, it can ever live again. We know it is true in our actual experience that reproduction presents us with particular images; but to assert that these are the perished originals is to demand a miracle to support our false beliefs. We have absolutely no kind of warrant in experience for our assurance, that what comes into the mind by Association is the particular as we had it. For the particular fact is made particular by an elaborate context and a detailed content. And this is not the context or content which comes back. What is recalled has not only got different relations; itself is different. It has lost some features, and some clothing of its qualities, and it has acquired some new ones. If then there is a resurrection assuredly what rises must be the ghost and not the individual. And if the ghost is not content with its spiritual body, it must come with some members which are not its own. In the hurry of the moment, we have reason to suspect, that the bodies of the dead may be used as common stock.
But if we are willing to throw over our orthodox creed, we may escape with less demand on our faith. The doctrine of Redintegration does not ask us to subscribe to the belief that what is past exists over again. It offers a simpler explanation of the facts. Given any presentation X, which has a content such as...abode..., it asserts that the oneness of this presentation is in a certain sense a connection of its content. The fact of the presentation absolutely disappears. What is left behind is a mental result,5 into the ultimate meta physical nature of which we do not here enquire. But this result is not a phenomenon, not a particular image or relation of such images. It is an alteration of the mind, which shows itself to us as a tendency to pass from content to content. It is a connection, not between this a and this &, or this c and this d, but between the universals a and &, or c and d.
It is a quality of the mind which manifests itself in the fact that, if we have one part of the content which appeared in X, then— although everything which particularized that content in X, and gave it existence, has disappeared— this bare universal a'b, c, or d, when given with a different set of particulars, may re-instate by its ideal identity any other of the universals, a, b, c, or d. It will recall it certainly in a particular clothing, but this clothing will be determined by present mental circum stances, and will not be the clothing of its past existence. And this particular clothing, again and in the second place, is not the bond which works in the reproduction. What works is the connection between the universals, and the basis of that work ing is the ideal identity of some element in what is present am in what is past.
§ ii I have illustrated my meaning already by anticipa tion (p. 35), and shall illustrate it hereafter. At present must hasten to meet an objection. I maintain that all asso ciation is between universals, and that no other associate exists Every kind of reproduction, in my judgment, takes place by virtue of identity plus the connection of universals. "And do you really," there may here come a protest, you really believe this holds good with emotions? If castoroil has made me sick once, so that I can not see it or even think of it without uneasiness, is this too a «™^J^J5 universals?" I reply without hesitation that beheve t » so; and that I must believe this or else accept a ^miracle a miracle moreover which is not in harmony with the facts it is invoked to explain. You believe then, I feel inclined to reply, that the actual feelings, which accompanied your vomit ing, have risen from the dead in a paler form once more to trouble you. I could not credit that even if it answered to the facts. And it does not answer, since the new feeling is clearly different from the old one. The old feeling was the event it was, by its presence in a certain series of events. It had a number of accompaniments, conditions, and circum stances, which belonged to it as this feeling. The psycho logical environment was in great part different. Nay, if we could observe it, we should probably find that its actual in ternal content has varied. We should see degrees or shades of quality, which in the two cases would probably not be the same. Your miraculous supposition is therefore not even a fiction which will work.
And if you say that, by the sameness of the feeling, you mean a feeling which is the same in kind, and for all practical purposes one with the other, this is exactly the thesis which I wish to establish, and which you have objected to. The feelings of sickness are the same in the main, that is, they have an identical content, which is the same although the contexts are different. But, if so, is it not, I would ask, admitted that what is reproduced is not the particular but is the universal? The first conjunction of castor-oil and sick ness has no longer the smallest existence as fact. But it gave rise to a connection of elements in the mind, which elements are an idealized part of the content of this perished fact. The new presentation of castor-oil is a fact which is certainly not the old fact; yet it has a content which is partly the same.
The presence of this identical universal supplies the antecedent to the hypothetical connection of elements in the mind, and this then passes from hypothesis into actual fact. In other words the ideal identity of this castor-oil with that castor-oil recovers ideally, and in an universal form, another element of the original context, And, so far as mere reproduction goes, nothing but the universal could ever be called up. It is the fresh presentation which adds detail to the reproduced ele ment. This new perception re-particularizes the universal, and does so in a way which will not be the old way, and in many cases will be strikingly different. But such re-particularization (if the term may be allowed) is not association, and is not reproduction. For though the new particular feeling of sick ness is no doubt the result of reproduction, yet it never was associated, and it can not have been reproduced, since it exists now for the first time. You may say that by a miracle the old feeling of sickness without detriment to its sameness has been changed en route; but this very change and this very difference is the denial of your doctrine, unless your doctrine too is from time to time changed by a parallel miracle.
I do not say that we should be right to reduce all repro duction to logical redintegration.6 That is a point on which I shall touch hereafter (Book III. I. Chap. III. §20). It does not concern us here. For it is not necessary to believe that the " idea " of a feeling is a logical idea, and that it is a con scious or even an unconscious symbol. What must however be believed is that it is an universal. And this need give rise to not the smallest psychological difficulty. Whatever differences may separate the various kinds of psychical phe nomena, they are all alike in one point. They all have con tent 7 as well as existence. They are not confined to the "that," but each has a "what," since there is a complex quality and relations of quality.* And, this being so, we have all that is required for the formation of universals. For an identity of content in different contexts is and must be an universal, whether we are dealing with perceptions or feelings or volitions.
§ 12. To suppose the presence and the operation of uni versals in all reproduction, introduces a unity into our view of the soul. It enables us to interpret all stages of mind as the growth of one principle. We can thus accept without abridgment the very highest phenomena, and we can show their root in the lowest and rudest beginnings of the soul. We may say that experience will begin when a present per ception has one part of its content identical with a past, and when this common universal re-instates another part of the original context. But that past element most certainly does not reappear in its particular form. It too is universal, and it is the connection of these universals which operates in the mind. Hence the content of the perception, which is now * Quality at this stage covers quantity.
3IO THE PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC BOOK II. PT. II present, is extended by means of this ideal synthesis, and, itself individual, individualizes the result. This true account is in harmony with fact. But, on the other hand, to suppose that one or more particular feelings or images are magically recalled and adhere to the perception, is directly contrary to the plain facts of observation. For these separate particulars are palpably absent; and in order to explain their obvious absence it is necessary to invoke a Law of Obliviscence, by which their details may again be shorn off. But this Law of Obliviscence has no title to exist in the shape which is given to it, except that it is demanded by an erroneous theory (vid. inf. §25). A miracle is first invoked to explain the facts, and then a fiction introduced to square the facts to the miracle.
But the unviolated facts support redintegration by identity. In a rudimentary soul a present sensation has its content in creased by internal extension. There are not several facts before the mind, but there is a single fact whose content, after enlargement, consists in part of an unconscious inference. The sensation is extended by an ideal supplement, and this supplement, through union with the individual sensation, be comes for the mind individual fact. On this view there is no psychical phenomenon which intervenes between the sensa tion and the resulting perception. We have not to postulate the irrelevant and conflicting detail of particular images, and have no need to rid ourselves of this palpable fiction by any arbitrary Law. Or again, if the result of the new sensation be desire or action, our theory still maintains its superiority. Let us however try to exhibit this in detail.
What is the fact to be explained? It is, I think, this. A sensation Ab has once led to an action Cd; and now a sensation E& (the same with A in respect of &) is presented. E& is then followed by an action ~Fd, which in respect of d is identical with Cd. Such is the fact, and we have two com peting explanations. On the first and incorrect interpretation E& calls up a particular image of Ab. The latter is associated with the particular idea of an action Cd, and Cd produces Fd. The transition is thus, E& — Ab — Cd — ¥d; and this transition is discrete from atom to atom. This is the first interpretation. On the other, Eb directly redintegrates df and Ebd directly produces EbdF. The transition may be stated as Eb — d — F; CHAP. I THE THEORY OF ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 3! I but, since b and d are universals and are not psychical phe nomena, the actual transition is unbroken from E to F. Now which of these explanations accords best with fact? The fact is that the supposed intermediate units, A& and Cd, can not be verified in observation. Their presence is deduced a priori, and is not pointed out a posteriori. We are then asked to believe that their presence exists though we can not see it; for it is hidden by the Laws of Obliviscence. But this mys terious agency has itself been manufactured a priori. It again can not be verified in actual experience. Hence we have first a principle which produces something other than our fact, and then an arbitrary invention to patch up this mistake. Such is the first interpretation; and let us look at the second. On that, I will not say that nothing is asserted either more or less than what can be observed, but I will say this. Not only is one principle used throughout, and that one sufficient to explain the facts, but there is no result, and not the fraction of a phenomenon, postulated by this principle, but what can be shown a posteriori. And, even apart from all question of truth and falsehood, a theory which demands two compensating hypotheses, must surely be rejected in favour of a theory, which works as well with one single hypothesis.
§ 13. But I shall be told, " This statement of the case is absurd. In the first place, and apart from truth and falsehood, the theory you advocate does not cover the facts. It fails to explain the suggestion of similars. Again and in the second place, the hypothesis you adopt is demonstrably false. And a single hypothesis is not admissible if it is insufficient, if it is not true, and if a true explanation is within our reach, answer, In the first place, as I shall soon point out, the reduction of suggestion to redintegration is an accomplished fact. And in the second place the falsity of redintegration can not be shown; but on the other hand what can be demon strated is, that your hypothesis is false. For (i) there is no such thing as Association by Contiguity; (ii) there is no such thing as Association by Similarity. I will try to make both o these last points quite plain, and will then return to de the true explanation.
§ 14 (i) Let us begin with Contiguity. What is the true view? The true doctrine is that, when elements have coexisted, they tend to be connected. What does this mean? It means that if (say) in a perception A the elements p and y are conjoined, the mind gets a tendency to join one to the other whenever either reappears. But what are P and y? They are universals. They have been detached from their original environment, and to some extent stripped of their particular qualities. They are not individual images. Thus if I have seen a black man stabbed with a sword in a certain street at a certain time and under certain conditions, what is left in the mind is not a connection between these special sensations, or between special images which are their feebler counterparts. I might shudder when I saw a white cow threatened with a butcher's knife at another time and place and under different conditions. For what is associated is not the images, it is always universals or types, which as such have no real existence, even in the mind. This is the true view. We will pass to the consideration of the erroneous doctrine.
There is not much doubt, I think, as to what that doc trine really is. But its adherents allow themselves a looseness of statement which is sometimes excessive; and we hardly know the point at which their mythology becomes conscious. We are at times led to think that past perceptions continue to exist, and on occasion rise to be seen of men. For observe the definition.
" Actions, Sensations, and States of Feeling, occurring to gether or in close succession, tend to grow together, or co here, in such a way that, when any one of them is afterwards presented to the mind, the others are apt to be brought up in idea." " When two impressions have been frequently experi enced (or even thought of) either simultaneously or in im mediate succession, then whenever one of these impressions, or the idea of it, recurs, it tends to excite the idea of the other."
A definition is not the place where one looks for fancy, but for actual belief. But consider these phrases, " when any one of them is afterwards presented" " whenever one of these im pressions recurs." Are they feasible unless the writer believes in the coarsest form of subterranean existence and of the Resurrection of the Body? But neither of the writers pro fesses to hold that belief. They both repudiate it. And yet that does not prevent both of them from speaking as if they accepted it in full, and at least one of them from reasoning on the assumption of its truth.* § 15. This point perhaps may be dismissed as a mere ques tion of statement; for there is no doubt that our authors would stoutly deny that the past impression is recalled to life. " Whenever one of these impressions, or the idea of it, re curs " are words that must be used in a popular sense. Then what is the exact sense? Are we to amend the formula by writing simply, " whenever the idea of one of these impres sions recurs "?
Even so we are still in the land of mythology. The " ideas " that are meant are particular existences. The fleet ing impressions in their passage through the void throw off feebler counterparts, shed pale doubles of themselves. And the idea, like the impression, is a particular unit; it is no uni versal but an actual phenomenon. It certainly is called " the idea of the impression," but this phrase does not mean that the two have any substantial identity. It means that one fol lows the other in time, and in fainter traces shows a similar detail. But if this is what is meant, it is not what is said.
" Whenever," we are told, " the idea of it recurs." But the idea, like the impression, exists only for a moment. Then how can it " recur " unless it is the same; and how can it be the same unless it has remained? We may figure to ourselves the faithful ghost, haunting the place where the body is not, and called up to the light by the spell of Association. But we surely must know that these pious legends are not literally true. For the image, like the sensation, endures but for a moment. And if the impression does not "recur/; then the idea does not "recur"; since in this respect there i ference between them.
It is mere mythology to talk of the copy, which the im pression has sloughed off, persisting in the world and preser ing its identity through the flux of change. The word recurs *I refer to J. S. Mill. See his Hamilton, Chap. XI. and We must call them " different ideas of the impression." And here, I think, we are approaching danger. For we naturally consider that, in a case of association, there is some one con nection throughout all the instances. We can hardly help be lieving, and talking as if we believed, that when (as we should like to say) something " recurs," then something else " recurs " also. But we must strip off this illusion, or wear it only when we come before the public. There is nothing that recurs. The original impression is one mental unit, the first idea is another, the second idea is a third passing atom, and so on for ever. There is no real bond which unites them together.
There is no common internal identity, which is the same in all and recurs amid change. If we call them " the ideas of one impression," even this is mere fable. We have a likeness no doubt, in all these cases. A hundred images, or more it may be, with all their differences and all their particularity, are yet each of them particular in such a way that they are all like each other, and all like the impression. This is startling, I admit, but even this does not warrant us in considering any one to be the same as the other, and united by holding the one substance of their prototype. If we desire a legend which perhaps may be harmless, we may call them all " ideas of the impression " in the sense that, like Abraham, the impression while it lived had them all in its loins. For no vehicle conveys the eternal verities half so well as does the labyrinth of a fantastic genealogy, with its one-sided begettings and ab normal parturition.