The Psychology of Association

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Columbia university., 1906 - Association of ideas - 80 pages
 

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Page 37 - Suitably to this experience, therefore, we may define a cause to be an object followed by another, and where all the objects, similar to the first, are followed by objects similar to the second.
Page 3 - My theory, on the contrary, is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion.
Page 28 - I am sensible that my account is very defective, and that nothing but the seeming evidence of the precedent reasonings could have induced me to receive it. If perceptions are distinct existences, they form a whole only by being connected together. But no connexions among distinct existences are ever discoverable by human understanding. We only feel a connexion or determination of the thought to pass from one object to another.
Page 30 - This uniting principle among ideas is not to be considered as an inseparable connexion; for that has been already excluded from the imagination: nor yet are we to conclude that without it the mind cannot join two ideas; for nothing is more free than that faculty: but we are only to regard it as a gentle force, which commonly prevails...
Page 3 - If we fancy some strong emotion, and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind, no 'mind-stuff...
Page 30 - Here is a kind of Attraction, which in the mental world will be found to have as extraordinary effects as in the natural, and to show itself in as many and as various forms. Its effects are everywhere conspicuous; but, as to its causes, they are mostly unknown, and must be resolved into original qualities of human nature, which I pretend not to explain.
Page 29 - Since it is not a being distinct from sensations ; a cherry, I say, is nothing but a congeries of sensible impressions, or ideas perceived by various senses : which ideas are united into one thing (or have one name given them) by the mind ; because they are observed to attend each other.
Page 28 - This strong combination of ideas, not allied by nature, the mind makes in itself either voluntarily or by chance ; and hence it comes in different men to be very different, according to their different inclinations, education, interests, &c.
Page 28 - Ideas that in themselves are not all of kin, come to be so united in some men's minds, that it is very hard to separate them; they always keep in company, and the one no sooner at any time comes into the understanding, but its associate appears with it; and if they are more than two which are thus united, the whole gang, always inseparable, show themselves together.
Page 39 - Hereditary transmission applies to psychical peculiarities as well as to physical peculiarities. While the modified bodily structure produced by new habits of life is bequeathed to future generations, the modified nervous tendencies produced by such new habits of life are also bequeathed; and if the new habits of life become permanent the tendencies become permanent.

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