Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/176

 ON ' ASSOCIATION '-CONTROVEESIES. 163 the word Attraction would be the most apposite, while unsuited to Contiguity. II. Whether, or how far, the prevailing enumeration of the laws of Association exhausts the powers of Intellect ? This is to be the final question of the paper ; and it is adduced here with a view to a partial clearance of the way. I say, then, that no enumeration of these laws expresses everything that is properly included under Intellect. For, in the first place, it is conceded on all hands, with mere variety in the statement, that Discrimination is a funda- mental property of our intelligence, quite as much as any process that can be referred to laws of Association ; it comes with the earliest germs of mental life, and accompanies it unceasingly to the last. It plays a part in the formation of the ideas, images or elements that are pre-supposed in Association. (See Hamilton's Reid, p. 243, n.) Unless it be Contrast, none of the commonly assigned associating principles expressly recognises it ; while any of the received definitions of Contrast must be greatly widened to embrace the operation in all its breadth. I hold, then, that, in any complete view of Intellect, Discrimination must be ranked as a primary attribute ; while it is the business of Psychology to trace its conse- quences to the uttermost. In the next place, the law of Contiguity, if defined as a power of associating into one mental group two or more dis- crete members, is not wide enough. The intellectual property that it expresses is equally operative in the formation and the persistence of the ideas themselves. In all probability, the simplest idea is already a complication ; and its parts are bound into a mental unity, or whole, by the force under-, lying contiguous adhesion. But even If this be not so, repp.tition, continuance, attention the circumstances that operate in maturing our strictly contiguous growths are needed to make the simplest idea self-subsisting, as the idea of a sweet or bitter taste, a smell, a soft touch, a melodious sound, a colour. It is common for writers on Psychology to treat of the formation of the idea before entering upon the associating principles ; this is simply an expository con- venience. The state of the fact is admitted by Mr. Sully, when he assigns the very same conditions of reproduction to single images and to the linking of these in composite groups by contiguous adhesion. There is. in truth,J)ut_c)ne__ law_at^the foundation of this_ reproductive_process ; Jmtjis the term Association is inapt to express the self-subsistence