In my last talk, in treating of Habit, I chiefly had in mind our _motor_
habits,--habits of external conduct. But our thinking and feeling
processes are also largely subject to the law of habit, and one result
of this is a phenomenon which you all know under the name of 'the
association of ideas.' To that phenomenon I ask you now to turn.
You remember that consciousness is an ever-flowing stream of objects,
feelings, and impulsive tendencies. We saw already that its phases or
pulses are like so many fields or waves, each field or wave having
usually its central point of liveliest attention, in the shape of the
most prominent object in our thought, while all around this lies a
margin of other objects more dimly realized, together with the margin of
emotional and active tendencies which the whole entails. Describing the
mind thus in fluid terms, we cling as close as possible to nature. At
first sight, it might seem as if, in the fluidity of these successive
waves, everything is indeterminate. But inspection shows that each wave
has a constitution which can be to some degree explained by the
constitution of the waves just passed away. And this relation of the
wave to its predecessors is expressed by the two fundamental 'laws of
association,' so-called, of which the first is named the Law of
Contiguity, the second that of Similarity.
The _Law of Contiguity_ tells us that objects thought of in the coming
wave are such as in some previous experience were _next_ to the objects
represented in the wave that is passing away. The vanishing objects were
once formerly their neighbors in the mind. When you recite the alphabet
or your prayers, or when the sight of an object reminds you of its name,
or the name reminds you of the object, it is through the law of
contiguity that the terms are suggested to the mind.
The _Law of Similarity_ says that, when contiguity fails to describe
what happens, the coming objects will prove to _resemble_ the going
objects, even though the two were never experienced together before. In
our 'flights of fancy,' this is frequently the case.
If, arresting ourselves in the flow of reverie, we ask the question,
"How came we to be thinking of just this object now?" we can almost
always trace its presence to some previous object which has introduced
it to the mind, according to one or the other of these laws. The entire
routine of our memorized acquisitions, for example, is a consequence of
nothing but the Law of Contiguity. The words of a poem, the formulas of
trigonometry, the facts of history, the properties of material things,
are all known to us as definite systems or groups of objects which
cohere in an order fixed by innumerable iterations, and of which any one
part reminds us of the others. In dry and prosaic minds, almost all the
mental sequences flow along these lines of habitual routine repetition
and suggestion.
In witty, imaginative minds, on the other hand, the routine is broken
through with ease at any moment; and one field of mental objects will
suggest another with which perhaps in the whole history of human
thinking it had never once before been coupled. The link here is usually
some _analogy_ between the objects successively thought of,--an analogy
often so subtle that, although we feel it, we can with difficulty
analyze its ground; as where, for example, we find something masculine
in the color red and something feminine in the color pale blue, or
where, of three human beings' characters, one will remind us of a cat,
another of a dog, the third perhaps of a cow.
* * * * *
Psychologists have of course gone very deeply into the question of what
the causes of association may be; and some of them have tried to show
that contiguity and similarity are not two radically diverse laws, but
that either presupposes the presence of the other. I myself am disposed
to think that the phenomena of association depend on our cerebral
constitution, and are not immediate consequences of our being rational
beings. In other words, when we shall have become disembodied spirits,
it may be that our trains of consciousness will follow different laws.
These questions are discussed in the books on psychology, and I hope
that some of you will be interested in following them there. But I will,
on the present occasion, ignore them entirely; for, as teachers, it is
the _fact_ of association that practically concerns you, let its grounds
be spiritual or cerebral, or what they may, and let its laws be
reducible, or non-reducible, to one. Your pupils, whatever else they
are, are at any rate little pieces of associating machinery. Their
education consists in the organizing within them of determinate
tendencies to associate one thing with another,--impressions with
consequences, these with reactions, those with results, and so on
indefinitely. The more copious the associative systems, the completer
the individual's adaptations to the world.
The teacher can formulate his function to himself therefore in terms of
'association' as well as in terms of 'native and acquired reaction.' It
is mainly that of _building up useful systems of association_ in the
pupil's mind. This description sounds wider than the one I began by
giving. But, when one thinks that our trains of association, whatever
they may be, normally issue in acquired reactions or behavior, one sees
that in a general way the same mass of facts is covered by both
formulas.
It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have
once grasped the principles of association. The great problem which
association undertakes to solve is, _Why does just this particular field
of consciousness, constituted in this particular way, now appear before
my mind?_ It may be a field of objects imagined; it may be of objects
remembered or of objects perceived; it may include an action resolved
on. In either case, when the field is analyzed into its parts, those
parts can be shown to have proceeded from parts of fields previously
before consciousness, in consequence of one or other of the laws of
association just laid down. Those laws _run_ the mind: interest,
shifting hither and thither, deflects it; and attention, as we shall
later see, steers it and keeps it from too zigzag a course.
To grasp these factors clearly gives one a solid and simple
understanding of the psychological machinery. The 'nature,' the
'character,' of an individual means really nothing but the habitual form
of his associations. To break up bad associations or wrong ones, to
build others in, to guide the associative tendencies into the most
fruitful channels, is the educator's principal task. But here, as with
all other simple principles, the difficulty lies in the application.
Psychology can state the laws: concrete tact and talent alone can work
them to useful results.
Meanwhile it is a matter of the commonest experience that our minds may
pass from one object to another by various intermediary fields of
consciousness. The indeterminateness of our paths of association _in
concreto_ is thus almost as striking a feature of them as the uniformity
of their abstract form. Start from any idea whatever, and the entire
range of your ideas is potentially at your disposal. If we take as the
associative starting-point, or cue, some simple word which I pronounce
before you, there is no limit to the possible diversity of suggestions
which it may set up in your minds. Suppose I say 'blue,' for example:
some of you may think of the blue sky and hot weather from which we now
are suffering, then go off on thoughts of summer clothing, or possibly
of meteorology at large; others may think of the spectrum and the
physiology of color-vision, and glide into X-rays and recent physical
speculations; others may think of blue ribbons, or of the blue flowers
on a friend's hat, and proceed on lines of personal reminiscence. To
others, again, etymology and linguistic thoughts may be suggested; or
blue may be 'apperceived' as a synonym for melancholy, and a train of
associates connected with morbid psychology may proceed to unroll
themselves.
In the same person, the same word heard at different times will provoke,
in consequence of the varying marginal preoccupations, either one of a
number of diverse possible associative sequences. Professor Münsterberg
performed this experiment methodically, using the same words four times
over, at three-month intervals, as 'cues' for four different persons who
were the subjects of observation. He found almost no constancy in their
associations taken at these different times. In short, the entire
potential content of one's consciousness is accessible from any one of
its points. This is why we can never work the laws of association
forward: starting from the present field as a cue, we can never cipher
out in advance just what the person will be thinking of five minutes
later. The elements which may become prepotent in the process, the parts
of each successive field round which the associations shall chiefly
turn, the possible bifurcations of suggestion, are so numerous and
ambiguous as to be indeterminable before the fact. But, although we
cannot work the laws of association forward, we can always work them
backwards. We cannot say now what we shall find ourselves thinking of
five minutes hence; but, whatever it may be, we shall then be able to
trace it through intermediary links of contiguity or similarity to what
we are thinking now. What so baffles our prevision is the shifting part
played by the margin and focus--in fact, by each element by itself of
the margin or focus--in calling up the next ideas.
For example, I am reciting 'Locksley Hall,' in order to divert my mind
from a state of suspense that I am in concerning the will of a relative
that is dead. The will still remains in the mental background as an
extremely marginal or ultra-marginal portion of my field of
consciousness; but the poem fairly keeps my attention from it, until I
come to the line, "I, the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of
time." The words 'I, the heir,' immediately make an electric connection
with the marginal thought of the will; that, in turn, makes my heart
beat with anticipation of my possible legacy, so that I throw down the
book and pace the floor excitedly with visions of my future fortune
pouring through my mind. Any portion of the field of consciousness that
has more potentialities of emotional excitement than another may thus be
roused to predominant activity; and the shifting play of interest now in
one portion, now in another, deflects the currents in all sorts of
zigzag ways, the mental activity running hither and thither as the
sparks run in burnt-up paper.
* * * * *
One more point, and I shall have said as much to you as seems necessary
about the process of association.
You just saw how a single exciting word may call up its own associates
prepotently, and deflect our whole train of thinking from the previous
track. The fact is that every portion of the field _tends_ to call up
its own associates; but, if these associates be severally different,
there is rivalry, and as soon as one or a few begin to be effective the
others seem to get siphoned out, as it were, and left behind. Seldom,
however, as in our example, does the process seem to turn round a single
item in the mental field, or even round the entire field that is
immediately in the act of passing. It is a matter of _constellation_,
into which portions of fields that are already past especially seem to
enter and have their say. Thus, to go back to 'Locksley Hall,' each word
as I recite it in its due order is suggested not solely by the previous
word now expiring on my lips, but it is rather the effect of all the
previous words, taken together, of the verse. "Ages," for example, calls
up "in the foremost files of time," when preceded by "I, the heir of all
the"--; but, when preceded by "for I doubt not through the,"--it calls
up "one increasing purpose runs." Similarly, if I write on the
blackboard the letters A B C D E F,... they probably suggest to you G H
I.... But, if I write A B A D D E F, if they suggest anything, they
suggest as their complement E C T or E F I C I E N C Y. The result
depending on the total constellation, even though most of the single
items be the same.
My practical reason for mentioning this law is this, that it follows
from it that, in working associations into your pupils' minds, you must
not rely on single cues, but multiply the cues as much as possible.
Couple the desired reaction with numerous constellations of
antecedents,--don't always ask the question, for example, in the same
way; don't use the same kind of data in numerical problems; vary your
illustrations, etc., as much as you can. When we come to the subject of
memory, we shall learn still more about this.
So much, then, for the general subject of association. In leaving it for
other topics (in which, however, we shall abundantly find it involved
again), I cannot too strongly urge you to acquire a habit of thinking of
your pupils in associative terms. All governors of mankind, from doctors
and jail-wardens to demagogues and statesmen, instinctively come so to
conceive their charges. If you do the same, thinking of them (however
else you may think of them besides) as so many little systems of
associating machinery, you will be astonished at the intimacy of insight
into their operations and at the practicality of the results which you
will gain. We think of our acquaintances, for example, as characterized
by certain 'tendencies.' These tendencies will in almost every instance
prove to be tendencies to association. Certain ideas in them are always
followed by certain other ideas, these by certain feelings and impulses
to approve or disapprove, assent or decline. If the topic arouse one of
those first ideas, the practical outcome can be pretty well foreseen.
'Types of character' in short are largely types of association.