The name becomes a talisman calling up the ideas of an indefinite number of resembling individuals,and the name applied to one in the first instance becomes a mark which calls up all,or,as he says,is the 'name of the whole combination.'Classification,therefore,'is merely a process of naming,and is all resolvable into association.'65The peculiarity of this theory,as his commentators again remark,is that it expressly omits any reference to abstraction.The class simply means the aggregate of resembling individuals without any selection of the common attributes which are,in J.S.Mill's phrase,'connoted'by the class-name.Abstraction,as James Mill explains,is a subsidiary process,corresponding to the 'formation of sub-species.'66Mill has now shown how the various forms of language correspond to ideas,formed into clusters of various orders by the principle of association.The next step will naturally be to show how these clusters are connected in the process of reasoning.
Here the difficulty about predication recurs.J.S.Mill 67remarks that his father's theory of predication consistently omits 'the element Belief.'When I say,'John is a man,'I make an affirmation or assert a belief.I do not simply mean to call up in the mind of my hearer a certain 'cluster'or two coincident clusters of ideas,but to convey knowledge of truths.The omission of reference to belief is certainly no trifle.
Mill has classified the various ideas and combinations of ideas which are used in judgment,but the process of judgment itself seems to have slipped out of account.He may have given us,or be able to give us,a reasoned catalogue of the contents of our minds,but has not explained how the mind itself acts.It is a mere passive recipient of ideas,or rather itself a cluster of ideas cohering in various ways,without energy of its own.
One idea,as he tells us,calls up another 'by its own associating power.'68Ideas are things which somehow stick together and revive each other,without reference to the mind in which they exist or which they compose.This explains his frequent insistence upon one assertion.As we approach the question of judgment he finds it essential.'Having a sensation and having a feeling,'he says,'are not two things.'To 'feel an idea and be conscious of that feeling are not two things;the feeling and the consciousness are but two names for the same thing.'69So,again,'to have a sensation and to believe that we have it,are not distinguishable things.'70Locke's reflection thus becomes nothing but simple consciousness,and having a feeling is the same as attending to it.71The point is essential.
It amounts to saying that we can speak of a thought as though it were simply a thing.
Thus belief not only depends upon,but actually is association.'It is not easy,'he says,'to treat of memory,belief,and judgment separately.'72As J.S.Mill naturally asks,'How is it possible to treat of belief without including in it memory and judgment?'Memory is a case of belief,and judgment an 'act of belief.'73To James Mill,however,it appears that as these different functions all involve association,they may be resolved into varying applications of that universal power.Memory involves 'an idea of my present self'and an 'idea of my past self,'and to remember is to 'run over the intervening states of consciousness called up by association.'74Belief involves association at every step.The belief in external objects is,as 'all men admit.'wholly resolvable into association.'75'That a cause means and can mean nothing to the human mind but constant antecedence'(and therefore 'inseparable association,'as he thinks)'is no longer a point in dispute.'76Association,it is true,may produce wrong as well as right beliefs;right beliefs when 'in conformity with the connections of things,'77and wrong beliefs when not in conformity.In both cases the belief is produced by 'custom,'though,happily,the right custom is by far the commonest.The 'strength of the association follows the frequency.'The crow flies east as well as west;but the stone always falls downwards.78Hence I form an 'inseparable association'corresponding to a belief in gravitation,but have no particular belief about the direction of a crow's flight.
