which we felt them, so that its very name becomes to us a sound of woe, or a spell of delight. In the same manner, the sight of a book will recall, not only the hours spent in its perusal, but the place and the time of our reading it, the thoughts it gave rise to, the opinions it advocated,-one idea suggesting another, till a long train of associations is revived, which a moment before had no place in the memory. But it is needless to multiply instances of a fact so familiar to us all. It is, indeed, this very familiarity which too often makes us overlook its importance. The influence of association is so general, so subtile, and so constant, that we yield to it almost as unconsciously as to that of the atmosphere; yet, if we reflect that all our prejudices, most of our likes and dislikes, our habits of thought, and in great measure of action, depend upon the nature of our associations, we shall feel the importance of ascertaining how far this principle is within our own control, and how we may direct so powerful an instrument towards the ends of reason and virtue.

It is evident that we can have no control over such accidental associations as those we have mentioned. The place where we have been happy or miserable will remain connected in our minds with our joy or our sorrow, in spite of every effort we may make to break the association. In these cases the will has no power; but it can and does control the far more important class of associations which may be called habitual; those which govern the succession of thoughts, and connect together ideas and feelings, so that the one shall habitually suggest the other. The principle of association, like that of habit, is always active, whether we are conscious of it or no. It governs the succession of thought at those times when the mind is apparently passive, and wanders without conscious attention from one subject to another. If, after a long reverie of this kind, we try to trace it back to its starting-point, we shall find that each thought was connected with the previous one by some link of association, and arose at its suggestion, however apparently remote from it. Most of our readers will probably remember having thus traced back, for curiosity's sake, a long chain of thought, the last link of which seemed wide as the poles asunder from the first. The

associations, in such cases, are generally the casual and arbitrary associations of which we have spoken, and which, when the mind is passive, recur more readily than any others. When we engage in serious thought, the succession of ideas is still governed by association, but the character of the latter is wholly changed. The mind, being alive and active, rejects the casual connection which would lead it far from its point, and fixes its attention solely on those associations which arise from the real relation of ideas. If this power of the will over the succession of thought be so often exercised as to give to a peculiar class of associations (such as those of real relation, for instance) a tendency to recur readily and spontaneously, then a habit is formed, which will influence our modes of thought for ever after. The points on which attention is fixed are those which will decide the character of the associations awakened, and the consequent train of thought. In considering any course of action, for instance, we may turn attention to the pleasure or inconvenience likely to arise from it, or to its efficiency as a means towards attaining some ulterior end, or simply to the question of right and wrong; in each case a different class of associations will arise. In the first, ideas of pleasure or pain will alone be suggested; in the second, the relation of means to an end; in the third, ideas of duty. It is at once obvious how these different classes of suggestions will influence the final decision, and also, that, if any one class recurs so often as to make the tendency to it habitual, it will also influence character and conduct.

The power which attention exercises over association is daily exemplified in the different associations which the same event or object will awaken in men whose character or profession has led them to fix their attention on different points. The anatomist examines with eager interest the dissected corpse from which another man turns away in horror. He pays no attention to all the loathsome accompaniments which make the spectacle sickening to unaccustomed eyes, and the ideas it suggests to him are not of disease and death, but of wonderful skill, of power, and of future benefits to mankind. If we suppose the object exciting such different emotions to be one con

nected with virtue or with vice, we see at once the great moral importance of that power which enables us to control the nature of our associations, and on which it therefore depends whether vice shall appear to us loathsome, or virtue attractive.

This is strongly exemplified in the case of certain faults which, not bearing that distinct character of evil that alarms conscience at once, are therefore too often indulged, even in well-principled minds, till the seemingly venial failing has become scarcely less injurious than positive vice. Indolence is one of these. Apparently harmless in its beginnings, it increases with indulgence, spreading from the body to the mind, from dislike to active pleasures and exercise, to dread of active pursuits or business of any kind, till the reluctance to exertion interferes with duties and social obligations; and family interests are neglected and forgotten amid the stagnation that has rusted mental power and impaired worth of character. Such is the ruin which might have been prevented had a different train of early associations been formed; had the mind been accustomed to connect the active exercise of all its powers and means of usefulness with the idea of duty and responsibility for the use of time. The whole natural history of prejudice lies in the strength of early association, which triumphs over reason, over conviction, nay, sometimes even over passion itself.* Hence the danger of false associations, and hence also the almost indestructible force of virtuous habits founded on the associations of childhood. There are few storms, even in the most tem

*The account given by Macaulay, in the beginning of the second chapter of his History of England, of the state of opinion and manners in the different parties at the time of the Restoration, is singularly illustrative of the power of association. It is curious and melancholy to see how, at that period, profligacy, baseness, and treason to national honor were tolerated by good and patriotic-minded men on the Royalist side, merely because the opposite virtues were associated with the hated adherents to different political principles; while the Puritans separated religion from all that might make it beautiful in the eyes of man, and abhorred the refine. ment of mind and manners, and the social enjoyments, which were in like manner associated with the hated and despised Cavaliers. There cannot be a stronger exemplification of the principle alluded to above.

pestuous life, violent enough to break down such associations, formed ere the mind was conscious of the impression, in the home where all was dear, where wisdom and truth, religion and love, became linked with the remembrance of a mother's smiles and blessings, and where the idea of vice was rendered insupportable by the thought of blame from those lips, reproach from those eyes, whose approval had ever been the first and dearest reward.

The influence of our habits of association on the intellect is only second in importance to that which they exercise over our moral feelings. Their different effects upon the mind arise from the difference between local association, or associations of mere contiguity of time and place, and philosophical association, or that arising from analogy and the real relations of things. To illustrate this difference, let us suppose two persons of these opposite habits of mind reading the same history. The one, whose habits of association are merely local, will observe the dates and places of events, and these will suggest other events which occurred at the same time, or which resembled them in their external and accidental circumstances. The other, whose mind is influenced by habits of philosophical association, will seek the relations of cause and effect, trace analogies of character, rather than of external circumstances, between the events he is reading of and others with which previous reading had made him acquainted, and thence be enabled to draw his own conclusions, and correct or confirm previous opinions. The former has only burdened his memory with a few more useless facts; the latter has gained a step in real knowledge.

It is obvious that our habits of association are closely connected with our mode of observing. Those points in any object. to which our observation is directed are naturally those with which its image will be associated in our minds, and which will suggest each other. In observing a fine tree, for instance, one person will remark only its value as a piece of timber; another will observe its peculiar growth, structure, foliage, and the soil best adapted to it; a third will dwell on its beauty and stateliness as it resists the wintry blast, or bears aloft its foliage in

the summer breeze. The associations of these three minds with the image of the tree will necessarily be as different as the character of their observations. To these differences may be traced much of what is termed originality of mind. The same facts are before us all; the same objects are presented to our senses; the poet, the philosopher, the great inventor, live not in different worlds, are not furnished with more acute bodily organs than the common herd; but the latter see only the external and casual relations of things, the former trace out their finer and more subtile analogies,* and reveal to us under this new aspect of our common earth beauty and truth unsuspected before.

In attempting to form right habits of association, the spirit of method will prove of great value. By its influence in teaching the mind to pursue every object systematically, and in keeping certain aims and principles steadily in view as the main lines by which our course is to be guided, it checks the wandering of the thoughts from one casual association to another, and gives a steady direction to observation, attention, and, consequently, association. In the methodical mind every fresh observation, every acquisition of knowledge, is classified according to certain relations, and tends to strengthen at once the particular association by which that classification is made, and to increase in the mind the aptitude to perceive such relations, and to be acted on by the suggestions they awaken.

The connection of memory with association makes it evident that our peculiar habits in this respect must have a marked influence upon memory. When we say we remember, it is only another word for saying that the thought present to our minds has suggested another which had formerly been present to it. Our recollections must arise according to the same principles of suggestion which regulate the succession of our thoughts; hence, while the quickness and retentiveness of memory depend on original constitution, its character depends on our habits

* See Dr. Brown's Philosophy of the Human Mind, Tait's edition, Edinburgh, 1834, p. 237.