must conspire with the intellectual energy of resuscitation by similars, in order to summon together in the view three structures so different. We can see, by an instance like this, how new adaptations of existing machinery might arise in the mind of a mechanical inventor. When it first occurred to a reflecting mind that moving water had a property identical with human or brute force, namely, the property of setting other masses in motion, overcoming inertia and resistance,--when the sight of the stream suggested through this point of likeness the power of the animal,-a new addition was made to the class of prime movers, and when circumstances permitted, this power could become a substitute for the others. It may seem to the modern understanding, familiar with water-wheels and drifting rafts, that the similarity here was an extremely obvious one. But if we put ourselves back into an early state of mind, when running water affected the mind by its brilliancy, its roar, and irregular devastation, we may easily suppose that to identify this with animal muscular energy was by no means an obvious effect. Doubtless when a mind arose, insensible by natural constitution to the superficial aspects of things, and having withal a great stretch of identifying intellect, such a comparison would then be possible. may pursue the same example one stage further, and come to the discovery of steam power, or the identification of expanding vapor with the previously known sources of mechanical force. To the common eye, for ages, vapor presented itself as clouds in the sky; or as a hissing noise at the spout of a kettle, with the formation of a foggy curling cloud at a few inches' distance. The forcing up of the lid of a kettle may also have been occasionally observed. But how long was it ere any one was struck with the parallelism of this appearance with a blast of wind, a rush of water, or an exertion of animal muscle? The discordance was too great to be broken through by such a faint and limited amount of likeness. In one mind, however, the identification did take place, and was followed out into its consequences. The likeness had occurred to other minds previously, but not with the same results. Such minds must have been in some way or other distinguished above the millions of mankind; and we are now endeavoring to give the explanation of their superiority. The intellectual character of Watt contained all the elements preparatory to a great stroke of similarity in such a case; a high susceptibility, both by nature and by education, to the mechanical properties of bodies; ample previous knowledge or familiarity; and indifference to the superficial and sensational effects of things. It is not only possible, however, but exceedingly probable, that many men possessed all these accomplishments; they are of a kind not transcending common abilities. They would in some degree attach to a mechanical education almost as a matter of course. That the discovery was not sooner made supposes that something farther, and not of common occurrence, was necessary; and this additional endowment appears to be the identifying power of Similarity in general; the tendency to detect likeness in the midst of disparity and disguise. This

supposition accounts for the fact, and is consistent with the known in. tellectual character of the inventor of the steam-engine." *

Dr. Hodgson's account of association is by all odds the best yet propounded in English.t All these writers hold more or less explicitly to the notion of atomistic 'ideas' which recur. In Germany, the same mythological supposition has been more radically grasped, and carried out to a still more logical, if more repulsive, extreme, by Herbart and his followers, who until recently may be said to have reigned almost supreme in their native country.§ For Herbart each idea is a permanently existing entity, the entrance whereof into consciousness is but an accidental determination of its being. So far as it succeeds in occupying the theatre of consciousness, it crowds out another idea previously there. This act of inhibition gives it, however, a sort of hold on the other representation which on all later occasions facilitates its following the other into the mind. The ingenuity with which most special cases of association are formulated in this mechanical language of struggle and inhibition, is great, and surpasses in analytic thoroughness anything that has been done by the British school. This, however, is a doubtful merit, in a case where the elements dealt with are artificial; and I must confess that to my mind there is something almost hideous in the glib Herbartian jargon about Vorstellungsmassen and their Hemmungen and Hemmungssummen, and sinken and erheben and schweben, and Verschmelzungen and Complexionen. Herr Lipps, the most recent systematic German Psychologist, has, I regret to say, carried out the theory of ideas in a way which the great originality, learning, and acuteness he

*The Senses and the Intellect, pp. 491-3.

+ See his Time and Space, chapter v, and his Theory of Practice, §§ 58 to 57.

Psychologie als Wissenschaft (1824), 2.

§ Prof. Ribot, in chapter 1 of his Contemporary German Psychology,' has given a good account of Herbart and his school, and of Beneke, his rival and partial analogue. See also two articles on the Herbartian Psychology, by G. F. Stout, in Mind for 1888. J. D. Morrell's Outlines of Mental Philosophy (2d ed., London, 1862) largely follows Herbart and Beneke. I know of no other English book which does so.

shows make only the more regrettable.* Such elaborately artificial constructions are, it seems to me, only a burden and a hindrance, not a help, to our science.t

In French, M. Rabier in his chapter on Association,‡ handles the subject more vigorously and acutely than any one. His treatment of it, though short, seems to me for general soundness to rank second only to Hodgson's.

In the last chapter we already invoked association to account for the effects of use in improving discrimination. In later chapters we shall see abundant proof of the immense part which it plays in other processes, and shall then readily admit that few principles of analysis, in any science, have proved more fertile than this one, however vaguely formulated it often may have been. Our own attempt to formulate it more definitely, and to escape the usual confusion between causal agencies and relations merely known, must not blind us to the immense services of those by whom the confusion was unfelt. From this practical point of view it would be a true ignoratio elenchi to flatter one's seif that one has dealt a heavy blow at the psychology of association, when one has exploded the theory of atomistic ideas, or shown that contiguity and similarity between ideas can only be there after association is done.§ The whole body of the associationist psychology remains standing after you have translated 'ideas' into 'objects,' on the one hand, and brain-processes' on the other; and the analysis of faculties and operations is as conclusive in these terms as in those traditionally used.

See his Grund tatsachen des Bewusstseins (1883), chap. vi et passim, especially pp. 106 ff., 364.

The most burdensome and utterly gratuitous of them are perhaps Steinthal's, in his Einleitung in die Psychologie, 2te Aufl. (1881). Cf. also G. Glogau: Steinthal's Psychologische Formeln (1886).

Leçons de Philosophie, I. Psychologie, chap. XVI (1884).

§ Mr. F. H. Bradley seems to me to have been guilty of something very Hike this ignoratio elenchi in the, of course, subtle and witty but decidedly long-winded critique of the association of ideas, contained in book part II. chap. I. of his Principles of Logic.

CHAPTER XV.*

THE PERCEPTION OF TIME.

In the next two chapters I shall deal with what is sometimes called internal perception, or the perception of time, and of events as occupying a date therein, especially when the date is a past one, in which case the perception in question goes by the name of memory. To remember a thing as past, it is necessary that the notion of ' past' should be one of our 'ideas.' We shall see in the chapter on Memory that many things come to be thought by us as past, not because of any intrinsic quality of their own, but rather because they are associated with other things which for us signify pastness. But how do these things get their pastness? What is the original of our experience of pastness, from whence we get the meaning of the term? It is this question which the reader is invited to consider in the present chapter. We shall see that we have a constant feeling sui generis of pastness, to which every one of our experiences in turn falls a prey. To think a thing as past is to think it amongst the objects or in the direction of the objects which at the present moment appear affected by this quality. This is the original of our notion of past time, upon which memory and history build their systems. And in this chapter we shall consider this immediate sense of time alone.

If the constitution of consciousness were that of a string of bead-like sensations and images, all separate,

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we never could have any knowledge except that of the present instant. The moment each of our sensations ceased it would be gone for ever, and we should be as if we had never been. We should be wholly

*This chapter is reprinted almost verbatim from the Journal of Specu. lative Philosophy, vol. xx. p. 374.

incapable of acquiring experience. . . . Even if our ideas were associ ated in trains, but only as they are in imagination, we should still be without the capacity of acquiring knowledge. One idea, upon this supposition, would follow another. But that would be all. Each of our successive states of consciousness, the moment it ceased, would be gone forever. Each of those momentary states would be our whole being."*

We might, nevertheless, under these circumstances, act in a rational way, provided the mechanism which produced our trains of images produced them in a rational order. We should make appropriate speeches, though unaware of any word except the one just on our lips; we should decide upon the right policy without ever a glimpse of the total grounds of our choice. Our consciousness would be like a glow-worm spark, illuminating the point it immediately covered, but leaving all beyond in total darkness. Whether a very highly developed practical life be possible under such conditions as these is more than doubtful; it is, however, conceivable.

I make the fanciful hypothesis merely to set off our real nature by the contrast. Our feelings are not thus contracted, and our consciousness never shrinks to the dimensions of a glow-worm spark. The knowledge of some other part of the stream, past or future, near or remote, is always mixed in with our knowledge of the present thing.

A simple sensation, as we shall hereafter see, is an abstraction, and all our concrete states of mind are representations of objects with some amount of complexity. Part of the complexity is the echo of the objects just past, and, in a less degree, perhaps, the foretaste of those just to arrive. Objects fade out of consciousness slowly. If the present thought is of ABCDEFG, the next one will be of BCDEFGH, and the one after that of CDEFGHI the lingerings of the past dropping successively away, and the incomings of the future making up the loss. These lingerings of old objects, these incomings of new, are the germs of memory and expectation, the retrospective and the prospective sense of time. They give that continuity to

* James Mill, Analysis, vol. 1. p. 319 (J. S. Mill's Edition).