The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)

[463] The theory propounded in this chapter, and a good many pages of the text, were originally published in the Popular Science Monthly for March, 1880.

[464] Compare Renouvier's criticism of associationism in his Essais de Critique générale, Logique, ii, p. 493 foll.

[465] Unless the name belong to a rapidly uttered sentence, when no substantive image may have time to arise.

[466] In his observations he says that time was lost in mentally taking in the word which was the cue, "owing to the quiet unobtrusive way in which I found it necessary to bring it into view, so as not to distract the thoughts. Moreover, a substantive standing by itself is usually the equivalent of too abstract an idea for us to conceive properly without delay. Thus it is very difficult to get a quick conception of the word 'carriage,' because there are so many different kinds—two-wheeled, four-wheeled, open and closed, and in so many different possible positions, that the mind possibly hesitates amidst an obscure sense of many alternations that cannot blend together. But limit the idea to say a landau, and the mental association declares itself more quickly." (Inquiries, etc., p. 190.)

[467] Physiol. Psych., ii, 280 fol.

[468] For interesting remarks on the sorts of things associated, in these experiments, with the prompting word, see Galton, op. cit. pp. 185-203, and Trautscholdt in Wundt's Psychologische Studien, i, 213.

[469] Mind, xi, 64-5.

[470] This value is much smaller than that got by Wundt as above. No reason for the difference is suggested by Mr. Cattell. Wundt calls attention to the fact that the figures found by him give an average, 0.720'', exactly equal to the time interval which in his experiments (vide infra, chapter on Time) was reproduced without error either way, and to that required, according to the Webers, for the legs to swing in rapid locomotion. "It is not improbable," he adds, "that this psychic constant, of the mean association-time and of the most correct appreciation of a time-interval, may have been developed under the influence of the most usual bodily movements, which also have determined the manner in which we tend to subdivide rhythmically longer periods of time." (Physiol. Psych., ii, 286). The rapprochement is of that tentative sort which it is no harm for psychologists to make, provided they recollect how very fictitious and incomparable mutually all these averages derived from different observers, working under different conditions, are. Mr. Cattell's figure throws Wundt's ingenious parallel entirely out of line.—The only measurements of association-time which so far seem likely to have much theoretic importance are a few made on insane patients by Von Tschisch (Mendel's Neurologisches Centralblatt, 15 Mai, 1885, 3 Jhrg., p. 217). The simple reaction time was found about normal in three patients, one with progressive paralysis, one with inveterate mania of persecution, one recovering from ordinary mania.

In the convalescent maniac and the paralytic, however, the association-time was hardly half as much as Wundt's normal figure (0.28'' and 0.23'' instead of 0.7'—smaller also than Cattell's), whilst in the sufferer from delusions of persecution and hallucinations it was twice as great as normal (1.39'' instead of 0.7''). This latter patient's time was sixfold that of the paralytic. Herr von Tschisch remarks on the connection of the short times with diminished power for clear and consistent processes of thought, and on that of the long times with the persistent fixation of the attention upon monotonous objects (delusions). Miss Marie Walitzky (Revue Philosophique, xxviii, 583) has carried Von Tschisch's observations still farther, making 18,000 measurements in all. She found association-time increased in paralytic dementia and diminished inmania. Choice time, on the contrary, is increased in mania.

[471] Mind, xii, 67-74.

[472] Compare Bain's law of Association by Contiguity: "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 afterwards presented to the mind, the others are apt to be brought up in idea" (Senses and Intellect, p. 327). Compare also Hartley's formulation: "Any sensations A, B, C, etc., by being associated with one another a sufficient Number of Times, get such a power over the corresponding Ideas a, b, c, etc., that anyone of the sensations A, when impressed alone, shall be able to excite in the Mind b, c, etc., the ideas of the rest." (Observations on Man, part i, chap. i, § 2, Prop. x.) The statement in the text differs from these in holding fast to the objective point of view. It is things, and objective properties in things, which are associated in our thought.

[473] Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th Ed., article Psychology, p. 60. col. 2.

[474] Physiol. Psych., 2d ed. ii, 300.

[475] The difficulty here as with habit überhaupt is in seeing how new paths come first to be formed (cf. above, p. 109). Experience shows that a new path is formed between centres for sensible impressions whenever these vibrate together or in rapid succession. A child sees a certain bottle and hears it called 'milk,' and thenceforward thinks the name when he again sees the bottle. But why the successive or simultaneous excitement of two centres independently stimulated from without, one by sight and the other by hearing, should result in a path between them, one does not immediately see. We can only make hypotheses. Any hypothesis of the specific mode of their formation which tallies well with the observed facts of association will be in so far forth credible, in spite of possible obscurity. Herr Münsterberg thinks (Beiträge zur exp. Psychologie, Heft i, p. 132) that between centres excited successively from without no path ought to be formed, and that consequently all contiguous association is between simultaneous experiences. Mr. Ward (loc. cit.) thinks, on the contrary, that it can only be between successive experiences: "The association of objects simultaneously presented can be resolved into an association of objects successively attended to.... It seems hardly possible to mention a case in which attention to the associated objects could not have been successive. In fact, an aggregate of objects on which attention could be focussed at once would be already associated."

Between these extreme possibilities, I have refrained from deciding in the text, and have described contiguous association as holding between both successively and coexistently presented objects. The physiological question as to how we may conceive the paths to originate had better be postponed till it comes to us again in the chapter on the Will, where we can treat it in a broader way. It is enough here to have called attention to it as a serious problem.

[476] Essay, bk. ii, chap. xxxiii, § 6. Compare Hume, who, like Locke, only uses the principle to account for unreasonable and obstructive mental associations:

"'Twould have been easy to have made an imaginary dissection of the brain, and have shown why, upon our conception of any idea, the animal spirits run into all the contiguous traces, and rouse up the other ideas that are related to it. But though I have neglected any advantage which I might have drawn from this topic in explaining the relations of ideas, I am afraid I must here have recourse to it, in order to account for the mistakes that arise from these relations. I shall therefore observe, that as the mind is endowed with a power of exciting any idea it pleases; whenever it dispatches the spirits into that region of the brain in which the idea is placed, these spirits always excite the idea, when they run precisely into the proper traces, and rummage that cell which belongs to the idea. But as their motion is seldom direct, and naturally turns a little to the one side or the other: for this reason the animal spirits, falling into the contiguous traces, present other related ideas in lieu of that which the mind desired at first to survey. This change we are not always sensible of; but continuing still the same train of thought, make use of the related idea which is presented to us, and employ it in our reasoning, as if it were the same with what we demanded. This is the cause of many mistakes and sophisms in philosophy; as will naturally be imagined, and as it would be easy to show, if there was occasion."

[477]Op. cit. prop. xi.

[478] See Chapter III, pp. 82-5.

[479] I strongly advise the student to read his Senses and Intellect, pp. 544-556.

[480] Time and Space, p. 266. Compare Coleridge: "The true practical general law of association is this: that whatever makes certain parts of a total impression more vivid or distinct than the rest will determine the mind to recall these, in preference to others equally linked together by the common condition of contemporaeity or of contiguity. But the will itself, by confining and intensifying the attention, may arbitrarily give vividness or distinctness to any object whatsoever." (Biographia Litteraria, Chap. v.)

[481] Leviathan, pt. i, chap. iii, init.

[482] I refer to a recency of a few hours. Mr. Galton found that experiences from boyhood and youth were more likely to be suggested by words seen at random than experiences of later years. See his highly interesting account of experiments in his Inquiries into Human Faculty, pp. 191-203.

[483] For other instances see Wahle, in Vierteljsch. f. Wiss. Phil., ix, 144-417 (1885).

[484] I retain the title of association by similarity in order not to depart from common usage. The reader will observe, however, that my nomenclature is not based on the same principle throughout. Impartial redintegration connotes neural processes; similarity is an objective relation perceived by the mind; ordinary or mixed association is a merely denotative word. Total recall, partial recall, and focalized recall, of associates, would be better terms. But as the denotation of the latter word is almost identical with that of association by similarity, I think it better to sacrifice propriety to popularity, and to keep the latter well-worn phrase.

[485] No one has described this process better than Hobbes: "Sometimes a man seeks what he hath lost; and from that place and time wherein he misses it, his mind runs back from place to place and time to time to and where and when he had it; that is to say, to find some certain and limited time and place, in which to begin a method of seeking. Again, from thence his thoughts run over the same places and times to find what action or other occasion might make him lose it. This we call Remembrance, or calling to mind. Sometimes a man knows a place determinate, within the compass whereof he is to seek; and then his thoughts run over all the parts thereof, in the same manner as one would sweep a room to find a jewel, or as a spaniel ranges the field till he find a scent, or as a man should run over the alphabet to start a rhyme." (Leviathan, 165, p. 10.)

[486] Theory of Practice, vol. i, p. 394.

[487]Ibid. p. 394.

[488] All association is called redintegration by Hodgson.

[489]Ibid. p. 400. Compare Bain, Emotions and Will, p. 377. "The outgoings of the mind are necessarily random; the end alone is the thing that is clear to the view, and with that there is a perception of the fitness of every passing suggestion. The volitional energy keeps up the attention on the active search; and the moment that anything in point rises before the mind, it springs upon that like a wild beast upon its prey."

[490] Compare what is said of the principle of Similarity by F. H. Bradley, Principles of Logic, pp. 294 ff.; E. Rabier, Psychologie, 187 ff.; Paulhan, Critique Philosophique, 2me Série, i, 458; Rabier, ibid. 460; Pillon, ibid. ii, 55; B. P. Bowne, Introduction to Psych. Theory, 92; Ward, Encyclop. Britt. art. Psychology, p. 60; Wahle, Vierteljahrsch. f. wiss. Philos., ix, 426-431.

[491] Dr. McCosh is accordingly only logical when he sinks similarity in what he calls the Law of Correlation, according to which, when we have discovered a relation between things, the idea of one tends to bring up the others, (Psychology, the Cognitive Powers, p. 130). The relations mentioned by this author are Identity, Whole and Parts, Resemblance, Space, Time, Quantity, Active Property, and Cause and Effect. If perceived relations among objects are to be treated as grounds for their appearance before the mind, similarity has of course no right to an exclusive, or even to a predominant, place.

[492] Cf. Bain, Senses and Intellect, 504 ff.; J. S. Mill, Note 39 to J. Mill's Analysis; Lipps, Grundtatsachen, 97.

[493] See, for farther details, Hamilton's Reid, Appendices D** and D***; and L. Ferri, La Psychologie de l'Association (Paris, 1883). Also Robertson, art. Association in Encyclop. Britannica.

[494] Treatise of Human nature, part i,. § iv.

[495] Observations on Man (London, 1749).

[496] Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829).

[497] Hartley's Theory, 2d ed. (1790) p. xxvii.

[498] [Current, that is, in France.—W. J.]

[499] La Psychologie Angloise, p. 242.