As the happiness, which is the end of education, depends upon the actions of the individual, and as all the actions of man are produced by his feelings or thoughts, the business of education is, to make certain feelings or thoughts take place instead of others. The business of education, then, is to work upon the mental successions. As the sequences • among the letters or simple elements of speech, may be made to assume all the differences between non sense and the most sublime philosophy, so the se quences, in the feelings which constitute human thought, may amorne all the themes between the extremes of madness and of wickedness, and the greatest attainable heights of wisdom and virtue; and almost the whole of this is the effect of educition. That, at least, all the crldference which exists be tween classes or holies of men is the effect of edu cation, without entering into the dispute Iftiff in dividual distinctions, we suppose, will be readily granted ; that it is education wholly which consti tutes the remarkable difference between the Turk and the Englishnian, and even the still more remark able difference between the most cultivated European and the wildest savage. Whatever is made of any class of men, we may then be sure is possible to be made of the whole human race. What a field for exertion! What a prize to be won ! Mr. Hobbes, who saw so much farther into the texture of human thought than of who bad gone be fore him, was the first man, as far as we remember, who pointed out what is peculiarly kwwiedge, tri this respect (namely, the order in which our feel ings succeed one another)—es a distinct object of study. He marked, with sufficient clearness, the existence and cause of the sequences ; but, after a very slight attempt to trace them, he to other inquiries, which had this but y for their object " The succession,' he says (Hume= Nature, ch. iv.), " of conceptions in the mind, series or conse quence (by consequence he means sequence) of one after another, may be casual and incoherent, as in dreams, for the most part ; and it may be orderly, as when the former thought introduceth the latter. The cause of the coherence or consequence (se quence) of one conception to another, is their first coherence or consequence at that time when they are produced by sense; as, for example, from St. Andrew the mind runneth to St Peter, because their names are read together; from St. Peter to a stone, for the same cause ; from stone to foundation, be cause we see them together; and, according to this example, the mind may ran almost from any thing to any thing. But, as in the sense, the conception of cause and effect may succeed one another, so may they, after sense, in the imagination." By the suc cession in the imagination it is evident he means the succession of ideas, as by the succession in sense, he means the succession of impressions.
Having said that the conceptions of cause and effect may succeed one another in the sense, and after sense in the imagination, he - adds, " And, for the most part, they do so; the cause whereof is the appetite of them who, having a conception of the end, have next unto it a conception of the next means to that end ; as when a man, from a thought of honour, to which he path an appetite, cometh to the thought of wisdom, which is the next means thereunto; and from thence to the thought of study, which is the next means to wisdom." (lb.) Here i3 a declaration with respect to three grand laws in the sequence of our thoughts. The first is, that the succession of ideas follows the same order which takes place in that of the impressions. The second is, that the order of cause and effect is the most common order in the successions in the imagination, that lei. ireithe.anceeition,of ideas. And the third is, that the appetites of •individuals have a great power over the successions of ideas;' as the thought of the object which the individual desires leads him to the thought of that. by which he may attain it.
Mr. Locke took notice of the sequence in the train of ideas, or the order in which they follow one another, only for a particular purpose,—to explain the intellectual which distinguish parti cular men. " Some of our ideas," he says, " have a natural correspondence and connection one with another.. It is the office and excellence of' our rea son to trace these, and hold them together in that union and correspondence which is founded in their peculiar beings. Besides this, there is another con nection of ideas, wholly owing to chance or custom; ideas that are not at all of kin come to be so united in some men's minds, that it is very hard to eparate them ; they always keep in company, and the one no sooner at any time comes into the understanding, but its associate appears with it; and, if they are more than two which are thus united, the whole ' gang, always inseparable. show themselves together." There is no attempt here to trace the order of se quence, or to ascertain which antecedents are fol lowed by which consequents ; and the accidental, rather than the more general phenomena, are those 4hich seem particularly to have struck his attention. He • gave, however, a wane to the matter of fact. When.one idea is regularly followed by another, he called this constancy of conjunction the association of the ideas; and this is the name by which, since the time of Locke, it has been commonly distin guished.
Mr. Hume perceived, much more distinctly than any of the philosophers who had gone before him, that to philosophize concerning the human mind was to trace the order of succession among the elemen tary feelings, of the man. He pointed out three great laws or comprehensive sequences, which he thought included the whole. Ideas followed one another, he said, according to resemblance, contigui ty in time or place, and cause and effect. The of these, the sequence according to cause and effect, was very distinctly conceived, and even the cause of it explained, by Mr. Hobbes. That of contiguity in time and place, is thus satisfactorily explained by Mr. Hume. " It is evident," he says, " 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 con ceiving its objects." (Treatise of Human Nature, P. I. B. I. sect. 4.) this is a reference to one of the laws pointed out by Hobbes, namely, that the order of succession among the ideas follows the order that took place among the impressions. Mr. Hume shows that the order of sense is much governed by contigui ty, and why ; and assigns this as a sufficient reason of the order which takes place in the imagination. Of the next sequence, that according to resemblance, he gives no account, and only appeals to the consci ousness of his reader for the existence of the fact. Mr. flume farther teroarked, that what are called our complex ideas, are only a particular class of cases belonging to the same law, the law of the suc cession of ideas; every complex idea being only a certain number of simple ideas, which succeed each other so rapidly, as not to be separately distinguish able without an effort of thought. This was a great discovery; but it must at the same time be owned, that it was very imperfectly developed by Mr. Hume. That philosopher proceeded, by aid of these prin.. ciples, to account for the various phenomena of the human mind. But though he made some brilliant developements, it is nevertheless true, that he did not advance very far in the general object. He was misled by the pursuit of a few surprising and para.. doxical results, and when he had arrived at them he stopped.