Mr. James Mill in his "Analysis of the Human Mind" made great and continual use of the laws of Association. He applied them (amongst other ways) to our belief in the uniform futurities of Nature. "There can" he writes "be no idea of the Future; because strictly speaking the Future is a non-entity--of nothing there can be no idea.... Our whole lives are but a series of changes, that is, of antecedents and consequents. The conjunction, therefore, is incessant; and, of course, the union of the ideas perfectly inseparable." (Vol. I. pp. 362-3.) And again, (p. 367,) "But I am told, that we have not only the idea of to-morrow, but the belief of to-morrow; and I am asked what that belief is. I answer, that you have not only the idea of to-morrow, but have it _inseparably_. It will also appear, that wherever the name belief is applied, there is a case of the indissoluble association of ideas. It will further appear, that, in instances without number, the name belief is applied to a mere case of indissoluble association; and no instance can be adduced in which anything besides an indissoluble association can be shewn in belief. It would seem to follow from this, with abundant evidence, that the whole of my notion of to-morrow, belief included, is nothing but a case of the inevitable sequence of ideas."--This theory Mr. Bain (no hostile critic) annotates as follows. "The case that is most thoroughly opposed to the theory of indissoluble association is our belief in the Uniformity of Nature. Our overweening tendency to anticipate the future from the past is shown prior to all association; the first effect of experience is to abridge and modify a strong primitive urgency. There is, no doubt, a certain stage when association co-operates to justify the believing state. After our headlong instinct has, by a series of reverses, been humbled and toned down, and after we have discovered that the Uniformity, at first imposed by the mind upon everything, applies to some things and not to others, we are confirmed by our experience in the cases where the uniformity prevails; and the intellectual growth of association counts for a small part of the believing impetus. Still, the efficacy of experience is perhaps negative rather than positive; it saves, in certain cases, the primitive force of anticipation from the attacks made upon it in the other cases where it is contradicted by the facts. It does not make belief, it conserves a pre-existing belief." In Mr. Bain's comment it is worthy of particular remark that he considers experience less as a foundation, than a _test_ always,--a _limit_ sometimes,--of that law which gives life to all the experimental sciences. "The uniformity imposed by the mind," he observes, "applies to some things but not to others." His view, therefore, places the principle itself in the light of a generality given by the mind and apprehended as a leading maxim. Its field is sometimes