suggests my coming trip to the seashore, and I am reminded of a business
appointment on which my ability to leave town on the appointed day
depends. And so on indefinitely.

Far the greater part of your successive states of consciousness, or even
of your ordinary "thinking," commonly so-called, consists of trains of
mental pictures "suggested" one by another. If the associated pictures
are of the everyday type, common to everyone, you have a prosaic mind;
if, on the other hand, the associations are unusual or unique, you are
happily possessed of wit and fancy.

[Sidenote: _The Reverse of Complex Formation_]

These instances of the action of the Law of Recall illustrate but one
phase of its activity. They show simply that groups of ideas are so
strung together on the string of some common element that _the activity
of one "group" in consciousness is apt to be automatically followed by
the others. But the law of association goes deeper than this. It enters
into the activity of every individual group, and causes all the elements
of every group, ideas, emotions and impulses to muscular movements, to
be simultaneously manifested._

[Sidenote: _Prolixity and Terseness_]

There is no principle to which we shall more continually refer than this
one. Our explanation of hay fever a moment ago illustrates our meaning.
Get the principle clearly in your mind, and see how many instances of
its operation you can yourself supply from your own daily experience.

So far as the mere linking together of groups of ideas is concerned,