Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/86

 EXPEKIMENTS ON THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 73 longest time for Chaucer (Canterbury Tales 1898), Aristotle (Logic [sic] 1522), and Bacon (Novum Organum 1388) ; the shortest time for Milton (Paradise Lost 328), Dante (Inferno 373), and Goethe (Faust 393). IV, We now come to consider certain classes of associations in which the mind is allowed a larger degree of liberty. The times required in eight such cases are given. A noun representing a class of objects was given and a particular example was named (river- Ehine) ; a picture of an object was shown, and instead of naming the entire picture the subject was required to select some part of the object and name it (picture of a ship-sail) ; a concrete noun was in the same way given and a part of the object was named : both the pictures and names of objects were shown, and the subject said what the thing is used for or what it does (horse-ride or trot) ; a substantive had to be found for an adjective (blue-sky), a subject for an intransitive (swim-fish) and an object for a transitive verb (write-letter). Thing-Example (52). B 727 216 663 102 C 537 179 457 95 Picture-Part of Object (52). 399 96 368 40 447 162 415 69 Substantive- Part of Object (26). 578 128 568 85 439 135 404 82 Picture-Property (52). 358 105 325 49 372 121 370 78 Su bstantire- Property (26). 436 157 390 109 '337 100 291 69 Adjective-Substantive (26). 879 278 823 186 351 86 307 41 Verb-Subject (26). 765 366 584 166 527 171 497 107 Verb- Object (26). 654 242 561 139 379 122 317 86 The times given need no long comment. The most difficult associations seem to be the finding of a special example when the class is given, and the subject for a verb ; in both of these cases the times needed were irregular, as is shown by the large mean variation. B took 111, C 146o- longer to find a subject than to find an object for a verb, the mind moving logically in the latter direc- tion. In identifying a particular object the mind was inclined to choose either one immediately at hand or to go back to the home of childhood. Thus out of the 52 cases B thought of an object