Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/112

 affected. It must be so far the same as to bear the same relation to the surrounding ideas, as to depend for what it is on what it has been, and to connect the present with the past. It must be the old idea lurking in the mind with all it's old associations hanging about it, and not an entirely new impression with entirely new associations, This idea must therefore be originally derived from an individual impression in contradistinction to half a dozen different ones possessing the same absolute properties: for the whole point turns upon this, that such and such ideas have not naturally any sort of connection with certain other ideas, but that any one of these ideas having been actually associated with any of the others, this accidental relation begets a peculiar and artificial connection between them which is continued along with the remembrance of the ideas themselves.

Sir J. Macintosh, I remember, explained this principle in his lectures in the following manner. "If," says he, "any gentleman who has heard me in this place to-day should by chance pass by this way to-morrow, the sight of Lincoln's-inn Hall will upon the principle we are now examining bring along with it the recollection of some of the persons he has met with the day before, perhaps of some of the reasonings which I have the honour to deliver to this audience, or in short any of those concomitant circumstances with which the sight of Lincoln's-inn Hall has been previously associated in his mind." This is a correct verbal statement, but it is liable to be misunderstood. Sir J. Macintosh was no doubt a man of very clear understanding, of an imposing elocution, a very able disputant, and a very metaphysical lawyer, but by no means a profound metaphysician, nor quite a Berkeley in subtlety of distinction. I will try as well as I am able to help him out in his explanation.