The Connection of Ideas (Relationality)

Simple Ideas are Connected by Resemblance, Contiguity, and Cause and Effect in order to Create Complex Ideas

All simple ideas may be:

• separated by the imagination, and
• united again in what form it pleases.

This separation and unity is guided by universal principles which render it always uniform with itself at all times and places.

If ideas were entirely loose and unconnected then:

• chance alone would join them, and
• it would be impossible for the same simple ideas to regularly become complex ones without some associating quality which:
  • binds those ideas, and
  • naturally leads from one idea into another.

This uniting principle among ideas can be removed by the imagination.

Of all our faculties, the imagination is the most free.

• It can join 2 ideas even without that uniting principle.

This is why languages so nearly correspond to each other.

Nature points out to everyone those simple ideas which are most proper to be united into a complex one.

There are 3 kinds of relations that move the mind from one idea to another:

1. Resemblance

We do not need to prove:

• that these qualities produce an association among ideas, and
• that the appearance of one idea naturally introduces another idea.

In the course of our thinking:

• our imagination runs easily from one idea to any other idea that resembles it, and
• this resemblance alone is a sufficient bond for the imagination.

2. Contiguity in time or place

The senses, in changing their objects, need to:

• change those bonds regularly, and
• take those bonds as they lie contiguous to each other.

By habit, the imagination:

• acquires the same method of thinking, and
• runs along the parts of space and time in conceiving its objects.

3. Cause and effect

Only the relation of cause and effect:

• produces a stronger connection in the imagination, and
• makes one idea more readily recall another idea.

To understand the full extent of these relations, we must consider that two objects are connected together in the imagination when:

• an object, Object X, is immediately resembling, contiguous to, or the cause of the other object, Object Y, and
• a third object, Object Z is interposed between them which resembles, is contiguous to, or is the cause of both.

This may be carried on to a great length, with the relation getting weaker.

For example, cousins in the fourth degree are connected by causation.

They are less close than brothers, and much less close than child and parent.

In general, all the relations of blood:

• depend on cause and effect, and
• are esteemed near or remote, according to the number of connecting causes interposed between the persons.

Motion Transfer in Bodies

The relation of causation is the most extensive of the three.

Object A is the cause of Object B if it:

• causes the existence of Object B, or
• causes Object B’s actions.

It is easy to imagine how such an influence of Object A on Object B may connect them in the imagination because:

• the action of Object B arises from the action of Object A, seen in a different light, and
• Object A continues its existence just as Object B exists.

Two objects are connected by cause and effect when:

• Object A produces an action in Object B, and
• Object A has a power of producing an action in Object B.

This is the source of all the relations of interest and duty, which creates influence and government.

• A master can direct the actions of a servant from force or agreement.
• A judge can fix the property of anything between the members of society by his opinion.

Our will is needed to convert the power into action.

In our memory, our simple ideas are connected by an inseparable connection.

But in our imagination, these principles of resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect, replace that inseparable connection.

This is a kind of attraction, * which:

• have extraordinary effects in both the mental world and the natural world, and
• has many, various forms.

Its effects are everywhere conspicuous.

But its causes are:

• mostly unknown, and
• the original qualities of human nature, which I cannot clearly explain*, and so I focus on effects.

The union of our simple ideas lead to complex ideas which I divide into Relations, Modes, and Substances.

These are the elements of my philosophy.