confusing, for the phenomenon itself is of the most capricious and
uncertain sort. It may be briefly described as follows. The simplest case
of association is that of sense. When we see or hear separately one of two
things, which we have previously seen or heard together, the occurrence of
the one has a tendency to suggest the other. So the sight or name of a
house may recall to our minds the memory of those who once lived there.
Like may recall like and everything its opposite. The parts of a whole,
the terms of a series, objects lying near, words having a customary order
stick together in the mind. A word may bring back a passage of poetry or a
whole system of philosophy; from one end of the world or from one pole of
knowledge we may travel to the other in an indivisible instant. The long
train of association by which we pass from one point to the other,
involving every sort of complex relation, so sudden, so accidental, is one
of the greatest wonders of mind...This process however is not always
continuous, but often intermittent: we can think of things in isolation as
well as in association; we do not mean that they must all hang from one
another. We can begin again after an interval of rest or vacancy, as a new
train of thought suddenly arises, as, for example, when we wake of a
morning or after violent exercise. Time, place, the same colour or sound
or smell or taste, will often call up some thought or recollection either
accidentally or naturally associated with them. But it is equally
noticeable that the new thought may occur to us, we cannot tell how or why,
by the spontaneous action of the mind itself or by the latent influence of
the body. Both science and poetry are made up of associations or
recollections, but we must observe also that the mind is not wholly
dependent on them, having also the power of origination.

There are other processes of the mind which it is good for us to study when
we are at home and by ourselves,--the manner in which thought passes into
act, the conflict of passion and reason in many stages, the transition from