mon persons, to which the goldsmith, refiner, and naturalist, add malleability, ductility, specific gravity, dissolubility in aqua regia, and indissolubility in all other menstruums, besides other qualities, which never enter into the head of an ordinary man.

By thus adding daily to our compositions, they grow so bulky, that we cannot take them in at one glance, but are forced to turn them about, as we would some very complicated piece of workmanship, in order to view them a side at a time. He that knows the properties of gold most completely, cannot bring them all into his thought at once; he may run through them successively in a very short space of time, but can never make them all appear together at the same instant: nay, should he go to give a full and accurate definition, it is odds but another person may suggest something that he has overlooked. But however this be admitted or not, certain it is, we do not always think of every particular belonging to the compounds under our consideration: nor can it be supposed, that every time we tell over a few guineas we have a thought of ductility, and many other qualities we know residing in them. Yet upon every idea being excited, some part at least of the assemblage whereto it belongs almost constantly occurs: we cannot see the face of a man, hear the barking of a dog, or smell the sweetness of a rose, without thought of something more than the bare sight, or sound, or smell: and how many soever ideas thus start up in company, we find them closely connected together, and apprehend them as component parts of one complex.

11. This partial appearance of our compounds suits extremely well with the narrowness of our conception. The ideas of things most familiar to us, contain a multitude of particulars, and were the whole tribe to rush in upon us at once, they would so fill the mind as to leave room for nothing else, at least we should find them too unwieldy and unmanageable to do us any service. For a single idea, how complicated soever, can at most afford us only a present amusement; it is necessary for use, that we should have two or more together in view: without this we could neither compare nor distinguish them, could discern neither their resemblance, nor difference, nor relations, nor effects, neither could we affirm, deny, or reason, concerning them; wherein the whole benefit we may expect to reap from them consist.

On the other hand, no small inconvenience arises from their not presenting before us entire for by this means our ideas continually fluctuate, not only by their colors fading and glowing alternately, but by varying their shapes; our assemblages turning about perpetually, and presenting different faces, or their compo

nent parts slipping away, and others supplying their places, so that we can scarce ever hold anything steady in our contemplation. Hence we are led to reason erroneously, or misunderstar one another, to discern resemblances, and draw consequences up on one view, of the same things which we do not find holding good upon another.

To remedy this mischief, logicians take the method of definition, but then if the definition descend too minutely into particulars, it will perplex instead of helping; therefore, when we would settle the idea of an object, we need bear in mind only so much of what belongs to it as may be sufficient for the occasion.What good would it do the gold-beater to think of the fusibility of his gold, or that it will not evaporate in the furnace, like lead or mercury? the color, malleability, weight, and thickness, are all that he has any concern with. Rhetoricians and poets employ figures and copiousness of expression, to bring that side of objects forward, which they would have to strike fullest upon our notice : they often use epithets contained in the things whereto they are applied, as just properties, verdant lawns, living men; not that such epithets add anything to the signification, but because they strike that part of the assemblage more strongly upon the mental eye, which might otherwise have been unobserved.

12. The circumstance, or situation things appear in, joins to make a temporary assemblage together with the things, but does not coalesce so as to remain always in their company. A man running exhibits one complex idea, wherein his motion is contained; the same man standing, or sitting, presents another: yet if we were to describe him to a stranger, we should hardly take his running, or sitting, into our description of his person. Nevertheless, we cannot call those circumstances, whenever they occur, distinct ideas from the man, but parts of the same compound, because they present instantly in the same glance, and may be suggested where they are not as in statues and drawings of animals in a moving posture, which strike us with ideas of motion in figures really quiescent. Much less can we suppose them distinct, when joined by that main bond of composition, a name, as in the terms, wind, rain, a river, a torrent, a horse race, which severally express one complex idea, whereof motion is a necessary ingredient; for, strike that out, and the remainder will be esteemed another thing, and deserving another appellation.

13. I shall have the less to say upon Association, because of the near affinity it bears to Composition, depending upon the same causes and subject to the same variations: and perhaps composition is nothing more than an association of the several ideas en

tering into a complex. What shall be the one or the other, seems to depend generally upon the use of language: for if things arising to the thought constantly in company, have a name given them, we deem them compounded, if none, we can only call them associated. Names being a receptacle, in great measure necessary for gathering our ideas, and holding them together in a complex: like those cushions your gossips stick with pins in hearts, lozenges, and various forms, against a lying-in; the cushion is no part of the figure, yet if that should chance to fall into the fire and be consumed, the pins must all tumble down in disorder, and the figures composed of them vanish. It is not always easy to determine when ideas combined together belong to the class of compounds or associates: perhaps the connection between the looks and sentiments of persons, which I have mentioned under composition, others might call association: nor is it very material to ascertain the limits between the two classes exactly. But since there are combinations which cannot with any propriety be styled complex ideas, I thought proper to take some notice of them apart.

The principal of these, because the most universally prevailing, and having the greatest influence upon our thoughts and transactions, is the associations between words and their signification. Nobody will deny that sounds and characters are mere arbitrary signs bearing no relation in nature to the things they express, yet they become so strongly connected by custom with our ideas of the things, that they constantly start up in the mind together, and mutually introduce one another. For words, heard or read, instantly convey the meaning couched under them, and our thoughts, upon common occasions, find a ready utterance when we would communicate them either by speaking or writing. Nor does the junction between words and their meaning depend upon the Will, whether it shall take place or no. Were a man unluckily obliged to sit and hear himself abused, he would be glad, I suppose, to dissociate the grating words from the scandal they contain, and reduce them to their primitive state of empty sounds, but will find it impracticable whence it appears that the seat of association lies in the organs, which seem to conspire in this case to throw a displeasure upon the mind, that she would exert all her power, it she had any, to escape.

14. And as our most compounded ideas turn different sides of themselves to view, so ideas, linked to a variety of others, usher in different associates, according to the occasion introducing them. For besides the combination, there is likewise a kind of attraction between our ideas, so that those preceding generally determine

what associates shall make their appearance; because our organs fall more easily into motions, nearly the same with those they have been already put into, than they can strike out different ones. Hence it comes to pass that many words, having various significations, always suggest that sense which the context requires.The word Man is used for one of the human species, for a male, for a full grown person, a corpse, a statue, a picture, or a piece of wood upon a chess-board, yet we never mistake the meaning, being directed thereto by what gave occasion for its being employed. Nor do single words only carry a different force, according to the sentence wherein they stand, but whole expressions to cast a lustre upon one another, and the very structure of the phrase gives a different aspect to the contents from what they would have had if placed in another order: in the due management of all which consists a great part of the arts of oratory and poetry.

I do not know how it is with other people, but I find that upon coming home after an absence of some months, I have a fuller and clearer idea of the scenes, persons, and places in the neighborhood, immediately upon coming into the house, and before I have seen any of them again, than I could have raised in the morning while at a distance: as if the bare removal from place to place gave a turn to the imagination, like the stop of an organ, that brings another set of pipes into play.

15. Upon this quality of cohering in our ideas was founded that art of memory mentioned by Cicero, and as he tells us generally ascribed to the invention of Simonides, who hit upon it by an accident. For being at an entertainment where there was a great number of guests, a message came that somebody wanted earnestly to speak with him in the street in the interim, while he was gone out, the house fell down, and so crushed the company within, that when their relations came to bury them, they could not possibly distinguish the bodies from one another, until Simonides pointed them out by remembering exactly where every man had sat. From hence, observing the connection between objects and their stations, he took the hint of his artificial memory, wherein he taught his scholars to choose some spacious place as a town, a park or large garden, with which, and all the turnings, corners, plan, buildings, and parts belonging to it they should be perfectly familiar, and then to fancy certain images resembling the things they would remember, disposed regularly in the several parts of that place. Having done this carefully, when afterwards they cast their thoughts upon the place, it would appear replete with the images, each in its proper order and situation wherein it had been disposed. But the same place was to be employed upon all oc

casions; for the figures might be wiped away at pleasure; by substituting a new set in their room, which would remain there so long as were wanting, or until displaced by having successors assigned them. Thus the association between images and their stations was only temporary, not perpetual like that of man and wife, but occasional, like that of travellers in a stage coach, who look upon themselves as one society during their journey, but when that is ended, separate, perhaps never to meet again their places being supplied the next day by another company, and the same coach serving successively as a cement for different societies. Something like this artificial memory our ladies practise every day; for when they are afraid of forgetting anything they purpose to do by and by, they put their ring upon the wrong finger, or pin a scrap of ribbon upon their stomacher: when afterwards they chance to cast their eye upon the ring or ribbon, they find the purpose for which they put it there associated therewith, and occurring instantly to their memory.

16. There are many other sorts of association, which whoever desires to know, may consult Mr. Locke's chapter upon that article, to which he may add others from his own observation, if he thinks it worth while to take the pains. But though our ideas are often made to cement by our bringing them together, yet the association once formed, they continue joined without any act of ours to preserve their coherence. Like the diamonds which a jeweller sticks in wax, in order to show you the form he proposes to set them in they are held together by the tenacity of wax, that is, by the properties of matter, though it were the act of a man that pressed them down so as to make them fasten.

CHAP. X.

TRAINS.

OUR Combinations being most of them too large to be taken in at one glance, turn up their different sides, or introduce their several associates successively to the thought, exhibiting so much at a time as can easily find entrance. Thus, when we think of man, there occurs first perhaps the whole outward human figure; then the inward composition of bowels, muscles, bones, and veins; then the faculties of digestion, loco-motion, sense, and reason. Or if we read a passage in Virgil, the plain meaning of the words starts up foremost to view; afterwards the turn of phrase, the grammar, the