Psychology · William James
ASSOCIATION.
The same thing occurs whenever we seek to recall something forgotten, or to state the reason for a judgment which we have made intuitively. The desire strains and presses in a direction which it feels to be right, but towards a point which it is unable to see. In short, the _absence of an item_ is a determinant of our representations quite as positive as its presence can ever be. The gap becomes no mere void, but what is called an _aching_ void. If we try to explain in terms of brain-action how a thought which only potentially exists can yet be effective, we seem driven to believe that the brain-tract thereof must actually be excited, but only in a minimal and sub-conscious way. Try, for instance, to symbolize what goes on in a man who is racking his brains to remember a thought which occurred to him last week. The associates of the thought are there, many of them at least, but they refuse to awaken the thought itself. We cannot suppose that they do not irradiate _at all_ into its brain-tract, because his mind quivers on the very edge of its recovery. Its actual rhythm sounds in his ears; the words seem on the imminent point of following, but fail (see p. 165). Now the only difference between the effort to recall things forgotten and the search after the means to a given end is that the latter have not, whilst the former have, already formed a part of our experience. If we first study _the mode of recalling a thing forgotten_, we can take up with better understanding the voluntary quest of the unknown.
The whole process can be rudely symbolized in a diagram. Call the forgotten thing _Z_, the first facts with which we felt it was related _a_, _b_, and _c_, and the details finally operative in calling it up _l_, _m_, and _n_. Each circle will then stand for the brain-process principally concerned in the thought of the fact lettered within it. The activity in _Z_ will at first be a mere tension; but as the activities in _a_, _b_, and _c_ little by little irradiate into _l_, _m_, and _n_, and as _all_ these processes are somehow connected with _Z_, their combined irradiations upon _Z_, represented by the centripetal arrows, succeed in rousing _Z_ also to full activity. _Turn now to the case of finding the unknown means to a distinctly conceived end._ The end here stands in the place of _a_, _b_, _c_, in the diagram. It is the starting-point of the irradiations of suggestion; and here, as in that case, what the voluntary attention does is only to dismiss some of the suggestions as irrelevant, and hold fast to others which are felt to be more pertinent--let these be symbolized by _l_, _m_, _n_. These latter at last accumulate sufficiently to discharge all together into _Z_, the excitement of which process is, in the mental sphere, equivalent to the solution of our problem. The only difference between this and the previous case is that in this one there need be no original sub-excitement in _Z_, coöperating from the very first. In the solving of a problem, all that we are aware of in advance seems to be its _relations_. It must be a cause, or it must be an effect, or it must contain an attribute, or it must be a means, or what not. We know, in short, a lot _about_ it, whilst as yet we have no _acquaintance_ with it. Our perception that one of the objects which turn up is, at last, our _quæsitum_, is due to our recognition that its relations are identical with those we had in mind, and this may be a rather slow act of judgment. Every one knows that an object may be for some time present to his mind before its relations to other matters are perceived. Just so the relations may be there before the object is.
From the guessing of newspaper enigmas to the plotting of the policy of an empire there is no other process than this. We must trust to the laws of cerebral nature to present us spontaneously with the appropriate idea, but we must know it for the right one when it comes. It is foreign to my purpose here to enter into any detailed analysis of the different classes of mental pursuit. In a scientific research we get perhaps as rich an example as can be found. The inquirer starts with a fact of which he seeks the reason, or with an hypothesis of which he seeks the proof. In either case he keeps turning the matter incessantly in his mind until, by the arousal of associate upon associate, some habitual, some similar, one arises which he recognizes to suit his need. This, however, may take years. No rules can be given by which the investigator may proceed straight to his result; but both here and in the case of reminiscence the accumulation of helps in the way of associations may advance more rapidly by the use of certain routine methods. In striving to recall a thought, for example, we may of set purpose run through the successive classes of circumstance with which it may possibly have been connected, trusting that when the right member of the class has turned up it will help the thought's revival. Thus we may run through all the _places_ in which we may have had it.
We may run through the _persons_ whom we remember to have conversed with, or we may call up successively all the _books_ we have lately been reading. If we are trying to remember a person we may run through a list of streets or of professions. Some item out of the lists thus methodically gone over will very likely be associated with the fact we are in need of, and may suggest it or help to do so. And yet the item might never have arisen without such systematic procedure. In scientific research this accumulation of associates has been methodized by Mill under the title of 'The Four Methods of Experimental Inquiry.' By the 'method of agreement,' by that of 'difference,' by those of 'residues' and 'concomitant variations' (which cannot here be more nearly defined), we make certain lists of cases; and by ruminating these lists in our minds the cause we seek will be more likely to emerge. But the final stroke of discovery is only prepared, not effected, by them. The brain-tracts must, of their own accord, shoot the right way at last, or we shall still grope in darkness. That in some brains the tracts _do_ shoot the right way much oftener than in others, and that we cannot tell why,--these are ultimate facts to which we must never close our eyes. Even in forming our lists of instances according to Mill's methods, we are at the mercy of the spontaneous workings of Similarity in our brain. How are a number of facts, resembling the one whose cause we seek, to be brought together in a list unless one will rapidly suggest another through association by similarity?
The law of accidental prepotency of certain processes over others falls also within the sphere of cerebral probabilities. Granting such instability as the brain-tissue requires, certain points must always discharge more quickly and strongly than others; and this prepotency would shift its place from moment to moment by accidental causes, giving us a perfect mechanical diagram of the capricious play of similar association in the most gifted mind. A study of dreams confirms this view. The usual abundance of paths of irradiation seems, in the dormant brain, reduced. A few only are pervious, and the most fantastic sequences occur because the currents run--'like sparks in burnt-up paper'--wherever the nutrition of the moment creates an opening, but nowhere else. The _effects of interested attention and volition_ remain. These activities seem to hold fast to certain elements and, by emphasizing them and dwelling on them, to make their associates the only ones which are evoked. _This_ is the point at which an anti-mechanical psychology must, if anywhere, make its stand in dealing with association. Everything else is pretty certainly due to cerebral laws. My own opinion on the question of active attention and spiritual spontaneity is expressed elsewhere (see p. 237). But even though there be a mental spontaneity, it can certainly not create ideas or summon them _ex abrupto_. Its power is limited to _selecting_ amongst those which the associative machinery introduces. If it can emphasize, reinforce, or protract for half a second either one of these, it can do all that the most eager advocate of free will need demand; for it then decides the direction of the _next_ associations by making them hinge upon the emphasized term; and determining in this wise the course of the man's thinking, it also determines his acts.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.