(4) Nor must we omit his ingenious and felicitous mode of illustrating the succession of our mental states, called by him "suggestion," to intimate that there is no connection in the nature of things between the ideas, and not "association," which might leave the impression that there was a nexus joining them.He is particularly successful in showing how by association the various ideas and, he adds, feelings blend, and, as it were, coalesce.He has called attention to an important phenomenon, which has been little noticed ever since he brought it out to view, and which he himself did not see the significance of." In our mental sequences, the one feeling which precedes and induces another feeling does not necessarily on that account give place to it; but may continue in {329} that virtual sense of combination, as applied to the phenomena of the mind, of which I have often spoken, to coexist with the new feeling which it excites, outlasting it, perhaps, and many other feeling to which, during its permanence, it may have given rise.I pointed out to you how important this circumstance in our mental constitution is to us in various ways: to our intellectual acquirements, since without it there would be no continued meditation, but only a hurrying confusion of image after image, in wilder irregularity than in the wildest of our dreams; and to our virtue and happiness, since, by allowing the coexistence and condensation of various feelings in one complex emotion, it furnishes the chief source of those moral affections which it is at once our happiness to feel and our virtue to obey." He has here got a glimpse of a great truth, which needs to be developed more fully than it has yet been it is the power of a motive principle, and of a strong purpose and resolution abiding in the mind to sway the train of thoughts and feelings.Had he followed out his own hint, it would have led him to discover deep springs of action directing the flow of suggestions.
While he illustrates the laws of suggestion under the three Aristotelian heads of contiguity, resemblance, and contrast, he intimates his belief that they may all be reduced to a finer kind of contiguity.As the latest speculations have not yet got down to the depths of this subject, it may be useful to know the hints thrown out by Brown, who seems to me to be so far on the right track, but not to have reached the highest fountain from which the stream issues: --"All suggestion, as I conceive, may, if our analysis be sufficiently minute, be found to depend on prior existence, or at least on such immediate proximity as is itself very probably a modification of coexistence." He begins with resemblance: "if a portrait be faithfully painted, the effect which it produces on the eye that perceives it is the same, or very nearly the same, as the effect produced on the eye by similar light reflected from the living object; and we might therefore almost as justly say, that when any individual is seen by us repeatedly he suggests himself by resemblance, as that he is thus suggested by his portrait." This surely comes very close to Hamilton's principle, that resembling objects, so far as they are alike, are the same, and to his law of repetition or identity.The following brings us quite as near his law of redintegration In many other cases, in which the resemblance is less complete, its operation may, even without such refinement of analysis as that to which Ihave alluded, be very obviously brought under the influence of contiguity.Thus, as the drapery forms {330} so important a part of the complex perception of the human figure, the costume of any period may recall to us some distinguished person of that time.A ruff like that worn by Queen Elizabeth brings before us the sovereign herself, though the person who wears the ruff may have no other circumstance of resemblance: because the ruff and the general appearance of Queen Elizabeth, having formed one complex whole in our mind, it is necessary only that one part of the complexity should be recalled -- as the ruff in the case supposed -- to bring back all the other parts by the mere principle of contiguity.The instance of drapery, which is but an adjunct or accidental circumstance of the person, may be easily extended to other instances, in which the resemblance is in parts of the real and permanent figure." " In this manner, by analyzing every complex whole, and tracing, in the variety of its composition, that particular part in which the actual similarity consists, -- and which may therefore be supposed to introduce the other parts that have formerly coexisted with it, -- we might be able to reduce every case of suggestion from direct resemblance -- to the influence of mere contiguity." " By the application of a similar refined analysis to other tribes of associations, even to those of contrast, we may perhaps find that it would be possible to reduce these also to the same comprehensive influence of mere proximity as the single principle on which all suggestion is founded." I am far from holding that this analysis into parts of the concrete idea starting the suggestion, furnishes a complete solution of the difficulties connected with fixing on one ultimate law; but it seems to set us on the right track.
He gives us a somewhat crude, but still important, classification of what he calls the secondary laws of suggestion, which induce one associate conception rather than another.He mentions longer or shorter continuance;more or less liveliness; more or less frequently present;more or less purity from the mixture of other feelings;differences of original constitution; differences of temporary emotion; changes in the state of the body; and general tendencies produced by prior habits.Had this arrangement been presented by another he would have proceeded to reduce it to simpler elements.
(5) His distribution of the relations which the mind can discover is worthy of being looked at: they are --I.COEXISTENCE.
(1) Position.
