ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. The phrase `association of ideas' seems to have been first used by the English philosopher, John Locke, although the facts to which it gives expression were often discussed long before Loeke's time. Even as early as the time of Aristotle, we find four classes of association described; that is, four ways in which the mind passes from one idea to another. These are association by simi larity, by contiguity, by contrast, and by suc cession. It was not, however, till the time of Hume that the principles of association 'became `laws' which were intended to explain not only the way in which idea follows idea, but the means by which the mind builds up all its knowl edge of the world. Hume conceived of associa tion as a 'gentle force' arising in 'original qual ities of human nature,' and 'pointing out to every one those simple ideas, which arc most proper to be united into a complex one.' Since the days of Hume, the principle of association has played a very large part in various systems of philosophy, particularly among the writers of the empirical school of philosophy in England. It has been worked out most elaborately in the writings of .fames Mill, Alexander Bain, and Herbert Spencer. At Hines. the advocates of the doctrine have gone so far as to speak of asso ciation as a law as universal in the mental world as that of gravity in the physical world. The theory thus developed is known as IlbsOehl ti011iS111; a theory which sees in the laws of as sociation the fundamental modes of mental act ion.
Association has now a different significance among writers on psychology. In the works to which we have referred it had not so 11111ell psychological as an epistemological significance (see ; that is, it was regarded as a principle of explanation in our knowledge of things. As thus conceived, associationism implied an atomic arrangement of the mind. and furnished rather an external and mechanical means for putting the various elements of knowledge together than an intrinsic mode of synthesis. It is only very gradually that the association of ideas has commie to lose its philo sophic-al flavor within psychology, and to repre sent a grouping of mental instead of standing as an explanation of experience in gen eral. But even within modern psychological sys
tems it has received so many shades of meaning that it is hard to define. It has stood le) as the one mode of connection of ideas; or (b) as the sole condition of reproduction. i.e. the way in which 'past' ideas are brought again to mind: or (c) as reproduction it when cue is said to associate black with sorrow: finally (d) it has signified a particular kind of grouping of mental elements. Let us see in what directions these conceptions are open to critieism.
First of all, we will examine association as the one mode of connection of ideas. This defini tion of association is too narrow. Unless we are content to make association a perfectly arbitrary thing, we must extend it beyond ideas. When, e.g. we look at stones, we seem to see a heavy, hard, rough, cold. resisting mass. What we actually see is. of coarse, only the of the stone: the shape, the cob'''. and the brightness. We 'think in' the rest from what our past ex perien•e has told us of the 'properties' of the stone. This 'thinking in' is just the same Idly] of an operation as is to be found in association. We have a sense-experience completed by idea tional elements. (See SEN SATION ; turn.) Since there is no successive `ealling up' of the parts, and since we have not a grouping of idea with idea, it is plain that we cannot speak of an asso ciation of ideas. No: we must rather speak of this form of connection as a siniultaneouti usso cintion.
From this simplest form of associative group ing we pass by short stages to the succeNs•re so•intio», the association in which part follows pert. Even here it need not be a sequence of ideas •hieh is experienced. A perception may start the train. The sight of the stone may bring the verbal idea 'geology; and this, in turn, the idea of the Carboniferous period, and so on. It is only in cases of abstraction—as in reverie—that our primitive pilot. p•reeption, is off duty, and we are guided by the central nerv ous processes underlying ideation.