Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/195

 182 A. BAIN: ON ' ASSOCIATION '-CONTROVERSIES. information and interest is of itself comprehensive enough : we could not multiply motives without putting down, as distinct items, every occasion when we desired to learn some- thing or to talk with somebody. But Psychology would never condescend to such particulars as this : it would serve no end. During the whole dreary process of mastering a foreign tongue, we are aware of only one or two recurring motives ; while we are painfully conversant with the steps of the associating process, by which we add one group after another, to our adhesions of name with name. Our interest lies in quickening this process by every known means motives included. The motives make one and only one con- dition : they are the same throughout. The common devices for promoting the requisite adhesions are not stated in terms of the motives, but in terms of the laws of association. A certain force of attention is required, and this comes under motive ; but there is a further regulation of the manner of presenting the names and objects to be united. The pro- fessors of artificial memory work not by motives, but by a skilful manipulation of the matters to be recollected. The topical memory of the ancients did not depend on motives. What I apprehend is meant by the infinity of our motives, is the sum-total of all the applications that we make of our resources as made up by association. These applications are of course very numerous,- but they admit of classification under a limited number of heads as simple memory, percep- tion, reasoning (in all its various phases), imagination and, Wundt would add, conduct. I do not doubt that association might be described under these various kinds of intellectual working; but I think a great deal would be lost, and nothing gained, by regarding simply the outcome of the associating processes, and saying nothing of the immense fabric that has to be reared before there can be any outcome. We should trace out, in detail, both supply and demand in our intel- lectual work. I have not yet discovered any better method of expounding the laws of Association than by combining two arrangements : first, the systematic view of mental elements, as they become associated together ; and second, the applications of these products to our various utilities.