The Relations Of Impressions And Ideas
Table of Contents
We have established 2 truths easily:
- The various causes which excite pride and humility come from natural principles
- Each different cause is adapted to its passion by a similar principle
How can we:
- make these principles fewer
- find among the causes some common origin of their influence
To do this, we must reflect on properties of human nature which influence our understanding and passions.
- The association of ideas
The mind cannot fix itself steadily on one idea for a long time.*
Superphysics Note
But the changing of our thoughts have a rule and method.
The rule is to pass from one object to what is resembling, contiguous to, or produced by it.
The mind flows from one idea to another idea which is related to it.
- A like association of impressions [feelings].
All resembling impressions are connected.
▪ No sooner one arises than the rest immediately follow.
• Grief and disappointment give rise to anger, anger to envy, envy to malice, and malice to grief again, until the whole circle be completed.
◦ In like manner our temper, when elevated with joy, naturally throws itself into love, generosity, pity, courage, pride, and the other resembling affections.
• When actuated by any passion, the mind finds it difficult to confine itself to that passion alone, without any change or variation.
• Human nature is too inconstant to have such regularity.
◦ Changeableness is essential to it.
• And to what can it so naturally change as to affections or emotions, which are suitable to the temper, and agree with that set of passions, which then prevail?
• There is an attraction or association among impressions and ideas. ◦ Though with this remarkable difference, that ideas are associated by resemblance, contiguity, and causation; and impressions only by resemblance.
- These two kinds of association assist each other
The transition is more easily made where they both concur in the same object.
A man, who is very much discomposed and ruffled by an injury from another, is apt to find 100 subjects of discontent, impatience, fear, and other uneasy passions, especially if he can discover these subjects in the person who injured him.
Those principles which forward the transition of ideas concur here with those principles which operate on the passions. ▪ Both unite in one action and bestow on the mind a double impulse.
Therefore, the new passion must arise with so much greater violence.
◦ The transition to it must be rendered so much more easy and natural.
According to Addison, an elegant writer:
The fancy delights in everything that is great, strange, or beautiful.
Any continued sound, as the music of birds, or a fall of waters awakens the mind, making it more attentive.
A fragrant perfume also makes the colours of the landschape appear more agreeable. Smell and sight recommend each other and are pleasanter together than separate.
This phenomenon shows the:
- association of impressions and ideas
- their mutual assistance