own language) discursion of mind, as an admitted fact, in the solution
alone of which, and this by causes purely physiological, he arrogates
any originality. His system is briefly this; whenever the senses are
impinged on by external objects, whether by the rays of light
reflected from them, or by effluxes of their finer particles, there
results a correspondent motion of the innermost and subtlest organs.
This motion constitutes a representation, and there remains an
impression of the same, or a certain disposition to repeat the same
motion. Whenever we feel several objects at the same time, the
impressions that are left, (or in the language of Mr. Hume, the
ideas,) are linked together. Whenever therefore any one of the
movements, which constitute a complex impression, is renewed through
the senses, the others succeed mechanically. It follows of necessity,
therefore, that Hobbes, as well as Hartley and all others who derive
association from the connection and interdependence of the supposed
matter, the movements of which constitute our thoughts, must have
reduced all its forms to the one law of Time. But even the merit of
announcing this law with philosophic precision cannot be fairly
conceded to him. For the objects of any two ideas need not have co-
existed in the same sensation in order to become mutually associable.
The same result will follow when one only of the two ideas has been
represented by the senses, and the other by the memory.

Long however before either Hobbes or Des Cartes the law of association
had been defined, and its important functions set forth by Ludovicus
Vives. Phantasia, it is to be noticed, is employed by Vives to express
the mental power of comprehension, or the active function of the mind;
and imaginatio for the receptivity (via receptiva) of impressions, or
for the passive perception. The power of combination he appropriates
to the former: "quae singula et simpliciter acceperat imaginatio, ea