ASSOCIATION AND THOUGHT. 359

earned the right to dispose of it. I shall use the term if they permit me. We have so far reduced the laws of Association to a single principle, and so far I have been able to refer the reader to my Principles of Logic. 1 I must now proceed more slowly. Beside this improved law of Contiguity or Redintegration, there is a law of Blending or Coalescence or Fusion. Where different elements (or relations of elements) have any feature the same they may unite wholly or partially. The more wholly they unite the more their differences are destroyed, with a transfer of strength to the result. And where they unite partially, they may or may not bring before us a new relation. There is no doubt that these laws of Contiguity and Blending work so closely together, that in many cases we hardly know which we have to lay stress on ; but I do not think that one can be reduced to the other. Unless we extend blending beyond events (to this point I shall return), it will not cause reproduction, since in that only one of the elements can be present, and what is absent cannot blend. And, on the other hand, though with blending we have usually reproduction, yet we also have effects which that will not explain. I must pause to illustrate this latter point. Take the cases first where strengthening is produced, where, e.g., an idea makes intense a sensation. You may say that the sensation has its content enlarged by ideal recovery, and that doubtless is usual ; but to say that it is necessary and that it explains the phenomenon seems quite untenable. In instances such as those where attention strengthens sensations in the extremities or elsewhere, I cannot always find an enlargement of content, and, if there is ideal recovery, I am sometimes at a loss to say what is reinstated. Take the cases again where distinctions are produced in a perception or idea. 2 I see a blur in the sky, and because I know it is a constellation, I then perceive that it is so. Again, I am thinking of an Englishman and then see a host of ants, which makes me think of an army of Englishmen. In the first case we may be told that it is all reproduction, and that the interstices are recovered by ideal contiguity. But, I answer, if the idea already was there when I did not perceive, will its further reinstatement 1 Professor Bain in MIND No. 46 has criticised some points in the account I there gave. I am sorry that the amount of space here at my disposal compels me to say merely that my opinions have not been changed. 2 I have got considerable assistance here from Fortlage, System der Psychologic, 1855. Cp. Volkmann, Lehrbuch, 93.