conjungit et disjungait phantasia." And the law by which the thoughts
are spontaneously presented follows thus: "quae simul sunt a phantasia
comprehensa, si alterutrum occurrat, solet secum alterum
representare." To time therefore he subordinates all the other
exciting causes of association. The soul proceeds "a causa ad
effectum, ab hoc ad instrumentum, a parte ad totum;" thence to the
place, from place to person, and from this to whatever preceded or
followed, all as being parts of a total impression, each of which may
recall the other. The apparent springs "saltus vel transitus etiam
longissimos," he explains by the same thought having been a component
part of two or more total impressions. Thus "ex Scipione venio in
cogitationem potentiae Turcicae, propter victorias ejus de Asia, in
qua regnabat Antiochus."

But from Vives I pass at once to the source of his doctrines, and (as
far as we can judge from the remains yet extant of Greek philosophy)
as to the first, so to the fullest and most perfect enunciation of the
associative principle, namely, to the writings of Aristotle; and of
these in particular to the treatises De Anima, and "De Memoria," which
last belongs to the series of essays entitled in the old translations
Parva Naturalia. In as much as later writers have either deviated
from, or added to his doctrines, they appear to me to have introduced
either error or groundless supposition.

In the first place it is to be observed, that Aristotle's positions on
this subject are unmixed with fiction. The wise Stagyrite speaks of no
successive particles propagating motion like billiard balls, as
Hobbes; nor of nervous or animal spirits, where inanimate and
irrational solids are thawed down, and distilled, or filtrated by
ascension, into living and intelligent fluids, that etch and re-etch