An examination of the human mind Author:John Ballantyne Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAP. II. ASSOCIATING PRINCIPLE. Sect. I. Nature of Association and prevailing Sentiments concerning it. Did the human mind possess no other principle ... more »than that of Sensitiveness mentioned in the preceding chapter, our whole stock of knowledge would be comprised in sensations and ideas of extension and duration, corresponding to the extent and duration of impressions on our sensitive organs, and in the other ideas which ,these involve. We should consequently be without all knowledge of things as external, or past, or future, and the amount of our intellectual attainments would be confined to the limited and transient feelings and conceptions that pertain to the present. Whether among the vast variety of beings in nature, there be any possessed of such a constitution, it would not be easy to determine; but man is certainly a being of a different constitution, for ideas which have been suggested by organic impressions often make their appearance afterwards without any impression whatever. Yesterday I walked into the fields in company with a friend. The form of his body made an impression on my sight, and the sound of his voice an impression on my ear, and the consequence was, that 1 had very distinct ideas of both. To-day I walked into the same fields alone, and ideas of the body and voice of my friend very readily occurred to me, though he was more than fifty miles distant. The idea which I obtained of my friend to-day, was plainly not owing to any impression made by his appearance on my organs of sense, but to the ideas of the place in which I was walking, and in which I had formerly accompanied him. This power acquired by ideas to suggest one another, is usually styled the Association of ideas. It is so styled, because the suggesting ideas do not remain alone, but ...« less