Association of Ideas
Table of Contents
There is a connection between:
- the different thoughts or ideas of the mind
- their appearance to the memory or imagination
They introduce each other with method and regularity.
Any thought which breaks in on the regular tract or chain of ideas is immediately remarked and rejected.
Our dreams have different ideas that are connected with each other in succession.
If we write down the freest conversation, we would find in it an idea or theme.
The compounded words of different languages do nearly correspond to each other.
This is proof that the simple ideas are:
- comprehended in the compound ones
- bound together by some universal principle, which had an equal influence on all mankind.
19 Different ideas are connected together.
I cannot find any philosopher who has enumerated the principles of association.
To me, there are only 3 principles of connexion among ideas:
- Resemblance
- Contiguity in time or place
- Cause or Effect
1 - A picture naturally leads our thoughts to the original
2 - the mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an enquiry on the others
3 - If we think of a wound, we reflect on the pain which follows it
4 - But that this enumeration is complete, and that there are no other principles of association except these, may be difficult to prove to the satisfaction of the reader, or even to a man’s own satisfaction.
All we can do in such cases is to:
- run over several instances
- examine carefully the principle which binds the different thoughts to each other until we render the principle as general as possible.
The more instances we examine, and the more care we employ, the more assurance shall we acquire, that the enumeration, which we form from the whole, is complete and entire.