=Spontaneous Trains of Thought.=--Take, to fix our ideas, the two verses from 'Locksley Hall': "I, the heir of all _the ages_ in the foremost files of time," and-- "For I doubt not through _the ages_ one increasing purpose runs." Why is it that when we recite from memory one of these lines, and get as far as _the ages_, that portion of the _other_ line which follows and, so to speak, sprouts out of _the ages_ does not also sprout out of our memory and confuse the sense of our words? Simply because the word that follows _the ages_ has its brain-process awakened not simply by the brain-process of _the ages_ alone, but by it _plus_ the brain-processes of all the words preceding _the ages_. The word _ages_ at its moment of strongest activity would, _per se_, indifferently discharge into either 'in' or 'one.' So would the previous words (whose tension is momentarily much less strong than that of _ages_) each of them indifferently discharge into either of a large number of other words with which they have been at different times combined. But when the processes of '_I, the heir of all the ages_,' simultaneously vibrate in the brain, the last one of them in a maximal, the others in a fading, phase of excitement, then the strongest line of discharge will be that which they _all alike_ tend to take. '_In_' and not '_one_' or any other word will be the next to awaken, for its brain-process has previously vibrated in unison not only with that of _ages_, but with that of all those other words whose activity is dying away. It is a good case of the effectiveness over thought of what we called on p. 168 a 'fringe.' But if some one of these preceding words--'heir,' for example--had an intensely strong association with some brain-tracts entirely disjoined in experience from the poem of 'Locksley Hall'--if the reciter, for instance, were tremulously awaiting the opening of a will which might make him a millionaire--it is probable that the path of discharge through the words of the poem would be suddenly interrupted at the word 'heir.' His _emotional interest in that word_ would be such that its _own special associations would prevail_ over the combined ones of the other words. He would, as we say, be abruptly reminded of his personal situation, and the poem would lapse altogether from his thoughts. The writer of these pages has every year to learn the names of a large number of students who sit in alphabetical order in a lecture-room. He finally learns to call them by name, as they sit in their accustomed places. On meeting one in the street, however, early in the year, the face hardly ever recalls the name, but it may recall the place of its owner in the lecture-room, his neighbors' faces, and consequently his general alphabetical position: and then, usually as the common associate of all these combined data, the student's name surges up in his mind.