Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/614

584 the other’s action because, in the experience B, they have already vibrated in unison. The lines in the diagram symbolize the summation of discharges into each of the components of B, and the consequent strength of the combination of influences by which B in its totality is awakened.



Hamilton first used the word "redintegration" to designate all association. Such processes as we have just described might in an emphatic sense be termed redintegrations, for they would necessarily lead, if unobstructed, to the reinstatement in thought of the entire content of large trains of past experience. From this complete redintegration there could be no escape save through the irruption of some new and strong present impression of the senses or through the excessive tendency of some one of the elementary brain-tracts to discharge independently into an aberrant quarter of the brain. Such was the tendency of the word "heir" in the verse from "Locksley Hall," which was our first example. How such tendencies are constituted, we shall have soon to inquire with some care. Unless they are present, the panorama of the past, once opened, must unroll itself with fatal literality to the end, unless some outward sound, sight, or touch divert the current of thought.

I prefer to discard the word "redintegration" altogether, and to give to this unobstructed process the name of Complete Association by Contiguity. Whether it ever occurs in this absolutely complete form is doubtful. We all immediately recognize, however, that in some minds there is a much greater tendency than in others for the flow of thought to take this form. Those insufferably garrulous old women, those dry