Page:Mind and the Brain (1907).djvu/180

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be obliged to bring together rather unexpectedly categories of phenomena which are generally considered separate.

The distinctive attribute of the reason consists, as I have said, in the setting to work of these two elementary properties, similarity and contiguity. It consists, in fact, in extending continuity by similarity; in endowing with identical properties and similar accompaniments things which resemble each other; in other words, it consists in impliedly asserting that the moment two things are identical in one point they are so for all the rest. This will be fairly well understood by imagining what takes place when mental images having the above-mentioned properties meet. Suppose that B is associated with C, and that A resembles B. In consequence of their resemblance the passing from A to B is easy; and then B suggesting C by contiguity, it happens that this C is connected with A connected, though, in reality, they have never been tried together. I say they are associated on the basis of their relation to B, which is the rallying point. It is thus that, on seeing a piece of red-hot iron (A), I conclude it is hot (C), because I recollect distinctly or unconsciously another piece of red-hot iron (B), of which I once experienced the heat. It is this recollection B which logicians, in their analysis of logical, verbal, and formal argument, call the