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some stakes at the door of his hut. He cast a look towards me, which was cold enough, and continued his work; but, the moment I addressed him in French, he started at the recollection of his country, and the big tear stood in his eye. These well-known accents suddenly

roused in the heart of the old man all the sensations of his infancy."*

The Emperor Napoleon, whose present cares might be supposed to have greatly weakened the chain of thought and feeling that bound him to the past, is said to have once expressed himself thus. "Last Sunday evening, in the general silence of nature, I was walking in these grounds [of Malmaison]. The sound of the church-bell of Ruel fell upon my ear, and renewed all the impressions of my youth. I was profoundly affected, such is the power of early associations."+-Such illustrations, which appeal to every one's consciousness in confirmation of their truth, show what association is.

218. Of the general laws of association.

In regard to Association, all that we know is the fact that our thoughts and feelings, under certain circumstances, appear together and keep each other company. We do not undertake to explain why it is that association, in the circumstances appropriate to its manifestation, has an existence. We know the simple fact; and if it be an ultimate principle in our mental constitution, as we have no reason to doubt that it is, we can know nothing more.

Association, as thus understood, has its laws. By the Laws of association, we mean no other than the general designation of those circumstances under which the regular consecution of mental states which has been men

tioned occurs. The following may be named as among the Primary or more important of those laws, although it is not necessary to take upon us to assert either that the enumeration is complete, or that some better arrangement of them might not be proposed, viz., RESEMBLANCE, CONTRAST, CONTIGUITY in time and place, and CAUSE and

EFFECT.

* Chateaubriand's Recollections of Italy, England, and America. + Scott's Life of Napoleon, vol. iii., chap. xxxiv.

VOL. I.-A A

219. Resemblance the first general law of association. New trains of ideas and new emotions are occasioned by Resemblance; but when we say that they are occasioned in this way, all that is meant is, that there is a new state of mind immediately subsequent to the perception of the resembling object. Of the efficient cause of this new state of mind under these circumstances, we can only say, the Creator of the soul has seen fit to appoint this connexion in its operations, without our being able, or deeming it necessary, to give any further explanation. A traveller, wandering in a foreign land, finds himself, in the course of his sojournings, in the midst of aspects of nature not unlike those where he has formerly resided, and the fact of this resemblance becomes the antecedent to new states of mind. There is distinctly brought before him the scenery which he has left, his own woods, his waters, and his home.-The enterprising Lander, in giving an account of one of his excursions in Africa, expresses himself thus. "The foliage exhibited every variety and tint of green, from the sombre shade of the melancholy yew to the lively verdure of the poplar and young oak. For myself, I was delighted with the agreeable ramble, and imagined that I could distinguish among the notes of the songsters of the grove, the swelling strains of the English skylark and thrush, and the more gentle warbling of the finch and linnet. It was, indeed, a brilliant morning, teeming with life and beauty; and recalled to my memory a thousand affecting associations of sanguine boyhood, when I was thoughtless and happy."

The result is the same in any other case, whenever there is a resemblance between what we now experience and what we have previously experienced. We have been acquainted, for instance, at some former period with a person whose features appeared to us to possess some peculiarity, a breadth and openness of the forehead, an uncommon expression of the eye, or some other striking mark; to-day we meet a stranger in the crowd by which we are surrounded, whose features are of a somewhat similar cast, and the resemblance at once vividly suggests the likeness of our old acquaintance.

Nor is the association which is based upon resemblance limited to objects of sight. Objects which are addressed to the sense of hearing are recalled in the same way.

"How soft the music of those village bells,
Falling at intervals upon the ear.

With easy force it opens all the cells

Where memory slept. Wherever I have heard
A kindred melody, the scene recurs,

And with it all its pleasures and its pains."

§ 220. Resemblance in every particular not necessary. It is not necessary that the RESEMBLANCE should be complete in every particular, in order to its being a principle or law of association. It so happens (to use an illustration of Brown*) that we see a painted portrait of a female countenance which is adorned with a ruff of a peculiar breadth and display; and we are, in consequence, immediately reminded of Queen Elizabeth. Not because there is any resemblance between the features before us and those of the English sovereign, but because, in all the painted representations which we have seen of her, she is uniformly set off with this peculiarity of dress, with a ruff like that which we now see. Here the resemblance between the suggesting thing and that which is suggested is not a complete resemblance, does not exist in all the particulars in which they may be compared together, but is limited to a part of the dress.

That a single resembling circumstance (and perhaps one of no great importance) should so readily suggest the complete conception of another object or scene, which is made up of a great variety of parts, seems to admit of some explanation in this way. We take, for example, an individual; the idea which we form of the individual is a complex one, made up of the forehead, eyes, lips, hair, general figure, dress, &c. These separate subordinate ideas, when combined together and viewed as a whole, have a near analogy to any of our ideas, which are compounded, and are capable of being resolved into elements more simple. When, therefore, we witness a ruff of a size and decoration more than or

* Brown's Philosophy of the Human Mind, Lect. xxxv.

dinary, we are at once reminded of that ornament in the habiliments of the British queen; and this on the ground of Resemblance. But this article in the decorations of her person is the foundation of only one part of a very complex state of mind, which embraces the features and the general appearance. As there has been a longcontinued coexistence of those separate parts which make up this complex state, the recurrence to the mind of one part or of one idea is necessarily attended with the recurrence of all the others.

221. Of resemblance in the effects produced.

. Resemblance operates, as an associating principle, not only when there is a likeness or similarity in the things themselves, but also when there is a resemblance in the effects which are produced upon the mind.-The ocean, for instance, when greatly agitated by the winds, and threatening every moment to overwhelm us, produces in the mind an emotion similar to that which is caused by the presence of an angry man who is able to do us harm. And, in consequence of this similarity in the effects produced, it is sometimes the case that they reciprocally bring each other to our recollection.

Dark woods hanging over the brow of a mountain cause in us a feeling of awe and wonder, like that which we feel when we behold approaching us some aged person, whose form is venerable for his years, and whose name is renowned for wisdom and justice. It is in reference to this view of the principle on which we are remarking, that the following comparison is introduced in Akenside's Pleasures of the Imagination.

"Mark the sable woods,

That shade sublime yon mountain's nodding brow;
With what religious awe the solemn scene

Commands your steps! As if the reverend form
Of Minos or of Numa should forsake

The Elysian seats, and down the embowering glade
Move to your pausing eye."

As we are so constituted that all nature produces in us certain effects, causes certain emotions similar to those which are caused in us in our intercourse with our fel

low-beings, it so happens that, in virtue of this fact, the natural world becomes living, animated, operative. The ocean is in anger; the sky smiles; the cliff frowns; the aged woods are venerable; the earth and its productions are no longer a dead mass, but have an existence, a soul, an agency.-We see here the foundation of metaphorical language; and it is here that we are to look for the principles by which we are to determine the propriety or impropriety of its use.

222. Contrast the second general or primary law.

CONTRAST is another law or principle by which our successive mental states are suggested; or, in other terms, when there are two objects, or events, or situations of a character precisely opposite, the idea or conception of one is immediately followed by that of the other. When the discourse is of the palace of the king, how often are we reminded, in the same breath, of the cottage of the peasant! And thus it is, that wealth and poverty, the cradle and the grave, and hope and despair, are found, in public speeches and in writings, so frequently going together and keeping each other company. The truth is, they are connected together in our thoughts by a distinct and operative principle; they accompany each other, certainly not because there is any resemblance in the things thus associated, but in consequence of their very marked contrariety. Darkness reminds of light, heat of cold, friendship of enmity; the sight of the conqueror is associated with the memory of the conquered, and, when beholding men of deformed and dwarfish appearance, we are at once led to think of those of erect figure or of Patagonian size. Contrast, then, is no less a principle or law of association, than resemblance itself.

Count Lemaistre's touching story, entitled, from the scene of its incidents, THE LEPER OF AOST, illustrates the effects of the principle of association now under consideration. Like all persons infected with the leprosy, the subject of the disease is represented as an object of dread no less than of pity to others; and while he is an outcast from the society of men, he is a loathsome spectacle

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