First, then, I deny Hobbes's claim in toto: for he had been
anticipated by Des Cartes, whose work De Methodo, preceded Hobbes's De
Natura Humana, by more than a year. But what is of much more
importance, Hobbes builds nothing on the principle which he had
announced. He does not even announce it, as differing in any respect
from the general laws of material motion and impact: nor was it,
indeed, possible for him so to do, compatibly with his system, which
was exclusively material and mechanical. Far otherwise is it with Des
Cartes; greatly as he too in his after writings (and still more
egregiously his followers De la Forge, and others) obscured the truth
by their attempts to explain it on the theory of nervous fluids, and
material configurations. But, in his interesting work, De Methodo, Des
Cartes relates the circumstance which first led him to meditate on
this subject, and which since then has been often noticed and employed
as an instance and illustration of the law. A child who with its eyes
bandaged had lost several of his fingers by amputation, continued to
complain for many days successively of pains, now in this joint and
now in that, of the very fingers which had been cut off. Des Cartes
was led by this incident to reflect on the uncertainty with which we
attribute any particular place to any inward pain or uneasiness, and
proceeded after long consideration to establish it as a general law:
that contemporaneous impressions, whether images or sensations, recall
each other mechanically. On this principle, as a ground work, he built
up the whole system of human language, as one continued process of
association. He showed in what sense not only general terms, but
generic images,--under the name of abstract ideas,--actually existed,
and in what consist their nature and power. As one word may become the
general exponent of many, so by association a simple image may
represent a whole class. But in truth Hobbes himself makes no claims
to any discovery, and introduces this law of association, or (in his