We shall come to psychology presently. Meantime _you should try to realise how well this doctrine of association works for practical purposes, and how strong is the appeal it makes to the practical side of our nature_. It explains the appearance of every single idea that has ever occurred to anybody; it offers to take us to the very heart of psychology without need of training or preparation; it flatters us into the belief that we have all our lives been talking and thinking psychology without knowing it; it covers up the gap that separates common sense from science. Small wonder that Hume compared the law of association in psychology with the law of gravitation in physics! All the great names in British psychology (and the fact throws a good deal of light on the psychology of the nation itself) are connected with the doctrine of association; a whole science has taken its national colour from a single principle of explanation. Association has also played its part, though less dominantly, in France and Germany. Realise all this; and realise also that the doctrine was of great service in the days when psychology was in the making; it is not only agreeable to common sense, it is not only historically important, but it also _did true psychological service_. Let us admit all this: and then we must add that _the reign of associationism was over as soon as ever psychology became scientific_; as soon, that is, as the proper task of psychology was recognised and formulated (p. 18). For let us take an instance: what does the word ‘summer’ suggest to you? Very likely it suggests ‘winter.’ How, then, is this association to be explained psychologically? By contrast? But the ideas of summer and winter may be exactly alike, both of them verbal-auditory-motor, or both of them mental pictures; the contrast is a contrast of meaning, not of mental process or pattern; the real summer, what we mean by the word ‘summer,’ contrasts with the real winter, and not the idea of summer with the idea of winter. By resemblance? But, if the ideas of summer and winter are exactly alike, so are they also like thousands of other ideas, verbal-auditory-motor or visual-imaginal; there is no reason in their psychological likeness why the one should suggest the other; and if they do suggest each other by ‘resemblance,’ the resemblance is again a likeness of meaning (they are both seasons of the year) and not of mental constitution. Try the matter out for yourself, in any concrete case of association, and you will reach the same result; the ideas of associationism are not psychological ideas. James sums things up for us: “Association,” he says, “so far as the word stands for an _effect_, is between _things thought of_; it is things, not ideas, which are associated in the mind. And so far as association stands for a _cause_, it is between _processes in the brain_; it is these which, by being associated in certain ways, determine what successive objects shall be thought.” =The