Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/136

 sufficient to carry the child forward to the place he has in view according to its particular situation. Association they say does not imply that the very same mechanical motions should be again excited in the same order in which they were originally excited, for that long trains of active associations may be transferred from one object to another from the accidental coincidence of a single circumstance, from a vague abstraction, from a mere name. This principle does not, therefore, resemble a book, but an alphabet, the loose chords from which the hand of a master draws their accustomed sounds in what order he pleases: not the machinery by which an instrument is made to play whole tunes of itself in a set order.

I have no objection to make to this account of association but that nothing will follow from it, and that nothing is explained by it. Let us see how it will affect the question in dispute.—We will therefore return once more to the case of the child learning to walk. How then does this explanation account for his not running against any object which stands in his way in the pursuit of a favourite plaything, if he has not been used to meet with the same interruption before? Why does he not go strait on in the old direction in which he has always followed it?—Because he is afraid of the blow, which would be the consequence of his doing so, and he therefore goes out of his way to avoid it. This supposes that he has met with blows before, though not running after his ball, nor from that particular object which he dreads, nor from one situated in the same way, or connected with the same associations. But this difference is of no importance according to the gloss: for it is not necessary that his fear or the effort which it leads him to make should proceed from the recollection of a former blow recurring in its proper place, and stopping him by mechanical