THE FOUR PRIME LAWS OF ASSOCIATION
[Sidenote: _The Seeming Chaos of Mind_]
If there is any one thing in the world that seems utterly chaotic, it
is the way in which the mind wanders from one subject of thought to
another. It requires but a moment for it to flash from New York to
San Francisco, from San Francisco to Tokio, and around the globe. Yet
mental processes are as law-abiding as anything else in Nature.
[Sidenote: _Predicting Your Next Idea_]
So much is this true, that if we knew every detail of your past
experience from your first infantile sensation, and knew also just
what you are thinking of at the present moment, we could predict to
a mathematical certainty just what ideas would next appear on the
kaleidoscopic screen of your thoughts. This is due to laws that govern
the association of ideas.
These laws are, in substance, that the way in which judgments and
ideas are classified and stored away, and the order in which they are
brought forth into consciousness depends upon what other judgments and
ideas they have been associated with most _habitually_, _recently_,
_closely_ and _vividly_.
There are, therefore, four Prime Laws of Association--the Law of
Habit, the Law of Recency, the Law of Contiguity and the Law of
Vividness.
Every idea that can possibly arise in your thoughts has its vast
array of associates, to each of which it is linked by some one element
in common. Thus, you see or dream of a yellow flower, and the one
property of yellowness links the idea of that flower with everything
you ever before saw or dreamed of that was similarly hued.
[Sidenote: _The Bonds of Intellect_]
But the yellow-flower thought is not tied to all these countless
associates by bonds of equal strength. And which associate shall come
next to mind is determined by the four Prime Laws of Association.
The Law of Habit requires that _frequency_ of association be the one
test to determine what idea shall next come into consciousness, while
the Laws of Recency, Contiguity and Vividness emphasize respectively
recency of occurrence, closeness in point of space and intensity of
impression. Which law and which element shall prevail is all a
question of degree.
The most important of these laws is the _Law of Habit_. In obedience
to this law, _the next idea to enter the mind will be the one that has
been most frequently associated with the interesting part of the
subject you are now thinking of_.
The sight of a pile of manuscript on your desk ready for the printer,
the thought of a printer, the word "printer," spoken or printed, calls
to mind the particular printer with whom you have been dealing for
some years.
The word "cocoa," the thought of a cup of cocoa, the mental picture
of a cup of cocoa, may conjure with it not merely a steaming cup
before the mind's eye and the flavor of the contents, but also a
daintily clad figure in apron and cap bearing the brand of some
well-known cocoa manufacturer.
If a typist or pianist has learned one system of fingering, it is
almost impossible to change, because each letter, each note on the
keyboard is associated with the idea of movement in a particular
finger. Constant use has so welded these associations together that
when one enters the mind it draws its associate in its train.
Test the truth of these principles for yourself. Try them out and see
whether the elements of habit, contiguity, recency and intensity do
not determine all questions of association.
[Sidenote: _Brands and Tags_]
If you wanted to buy a house, what local subdivision would come first
to your mind, and why? If you were about to purchase a new tire for
your automobile or a few pairs of stockings, what brand would you buy,
and why? When you think of a camera or a cake of soap, what particular
make comes first to your mind? When you think of a home, what is the
mental picture that rises before you, and why?
Whatever the article, whether it be one of food or luxury or
investment, or even of sentiment, you will find that it is tagged with
a definite associate--a name, a brand, or a personality characterized
by frequency, recency, closeness or vividness of presentation to your
consciousness.
The grouping together of sensations into integral ideas is one step
in the complicated mental processes by which useful knowledge is
acquired. But the associative processes go much beyond this.
[Sidenote: _How Experience is Systematized_]
We also compare the different objects of present and past experience.
We carefully and thoroughly catalogue them into groups, divisions and
subdivisions for convenient and ready reference. This we do by the
processes of memory, of association and of discrimination, previously
referred to.
[Sidenote: _How Language Is Simplified_]
Through these processes our knowledge of the world, derived from the
whole vast field of experience, is unified and systematized. Through
these processes is order realized from chaos. Through these processes
it comes about that not only individual thought, but the communication
of thought from one person to another, is vastly simplified. Language
is enabled to deal with ideas instead of with isolated sense-perceptions.
The single word "horse" suffices to convey a thought that could not be
adequately set forth in a page-long enumeration of disconnected
sense-perceptions.
The associative process covers a wide range. It includes, for example,
not only the simple definition of an aggregate of sense-perceptions,
as "horse" or "cow"; it includes as well the inferential process of
abstract reasoning.
[Sidenote: _Processes of Reasoning and Reflection_]
The only real difference between these widely diverse mental acts, one
apparently so much less complicated and profound than the other, is
that the former involves _no act of memory_, while the latter is based
wholly on sensory experiences _of the past_.
_Abstract reasoning is merely reasoning from premises and to
conclusions which are not present to our senses at the time._