Mental Philosophy: Including the Intellect, Sensibilities, and WillHaven, Joseph
Philosophy
Mental Philosophy: Including the Intellect, Sensibilities, and Will
Haven, Joseph
Psychology
_Further Question.--View of Rosenkranz._--It may still be questioned
whether the specific laws of association, as usually given, viz.,
resemblance, contrast, contiguity, and cause, are a complete and
exhaustive list. Are there not relations of things to each other, and
so relations of thought, which do not fall under any of the categories
now named? A distinguished psychologist of the Hegelian school,
Rosenkranz, denies even that there are any laws of association. Law
is found, he says, where the manifoldness still evinces unity, to
which the manifold and accidental are subject. But association is not
subject to any such unity. It is a free process. There are indeed
certain limitations or categories of thought, but these so-called laws
of association are not to be confounded with those categories; they
are not exhaustive of them. Why not also introduce the law by which
we pass from quality to quantity, being to appearance, the universal
to the particular, the end to the means, etc., etc.? In short, all
metaphysical and logical categories lay claim to be included in the
list of such laws. No one can calculate the possible connections of
one conception with another. Each is, for us, the middle point of a
universe from which we can go forth on all sides. What diverse trains
of thought, for example, may the Strasburg minster awaken in my mind:
the material of which it is built, the architect, the middle ages, the
gothic style, etc., etc. There is, in a word, no law of association.
_Objections to this View._--Such, in substance, is the view maintained
by this able writer. We cannot altogether coincide with it. That the
specific laws of Aristotle, Hume, and Brown, are not exhaustive, may
very likely be true; that there is no law, no unity to which this
manifoldness of conception is subject, is yet to be shown. Take the
very case supposed. The gothic minster of Strasburg reminds me of the
gothic style of architecture. What is that but an instance under the
law of similarity? It reminds me of the middle ages. What is that but
the operation of the law of contiguity in time? It brings to mind the
architect. What is that but the relation of cause to effect? Or, if I
think of the material of which the building is composed, the marble of
this minster reminding me of the class, marble, does not that again
fall under the relation of a part to the whole, which is comprehended
under the general law of coadjacence, or contiguity in space? So
quality and quantity, matter and form, being and appearance, as parts
of a comprehensive whole, recall each other. The instances given, then,
so far from proving that there is no law of association actually fall
under the specific laws enumerated.
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