‘Many children,’ he says, ‘imputing the pain they endured at school to their books they were corrected for, so join those ideas together that a book becomes their aversion, and they are never reconciled to the study and use of them all their lives after: and thus reading becomes a torment to them, which otherwise possibly they might have made the great pleasure of their lives. There are rooms convenient enough that some men cannot study in, and fashions of vessels, which though ever so clean and commodious they cannot drink out of, and that by reason of some accidental ideas which are annexed to them, and make them offensive: and who is there that has not observed some man to flag at the appearance, or in the company of some certain person, not otherwise superior to him, but because having once on some occasion got the ascendant, the idea of authority and distance goes along with that of the person? And he that has been thus subjected is not able to separate them. Instances of this kind are so plentiful every where, that if I add one more, it is only for the pleasant oddness of it: it is of a young gentleman, who having learned to dance, and that to great perfection, there happened to stand an old trunk in the room where he learned: the idea of this remarkable piece of household stuff had so mixed itself with all the turns and steps of his dances, that though in that chamber he could dance exceedingly well, yet it was only whilst that trunk was there; nor could he perform well in any other place, unless that, or some such other trunk had its due position in the room.’ The following passage approaches the nearest to the statement of a general principle: