association, and a component element in the materia subjecta, the
parts of which are to be associated, must needs be co-present with
all. Nothing, therefore, can be more easy than to pass off on an
incautious mind this constant companion of each, for the essential
substance of all. But if we appeal to our own consciousness, we shall
find that even time itself, as the cause of a particular act of
association, is distinct from contemporaneity, as the condition of all
association. Seeing a mackerel, it may happen, that I immediately
think of gooseberries, because I at the same time ate mackerel with
gooseberries as the sauce. The first syllable of the latter word,
being that which had coexisted with the image of the bird so called, I
may then think of a goose. In the next moment the image of a swan may
arise before me, though I had never seen the two birds together. In
the first two instances, I am conscious that their co-existence in
time was the circumstance, that enabled me to recollect them; and
equally conscious am I that the latter was recalled to me by the joint
operation of likeness and contrast. So it is with cause and effect: so
too with order. So I am able to distinguish whether it was proximity
in time, or continuity in space, that occasioned me to recall B on the
mention of A. They cannot be indeed separated from contemporaneity;
for that would be to separate them from the mind itself. The act of
consciousness is indeed identical with time considered in its essence.
I mean time per se, as contra-distinguished from our notion of time;
for this is always blended with the idea of space, which, as the
opposite of time, is therefore its measure. Nevertheless the accident
of seeing two objects at the same moment, and the accident of seeing
them in the same place are two distinct or distinguishable causes: and
the true practical general law of association is this; that whatever
makes certain parts of a total impression more vivid or distinct than
the rest, will determine the mind to recall these in preference to