Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 157
ply them without necessity. That trains of thinking, which
by frequent repetition have become famniliar, should spontaneously offer themselves to our fancy, seems to require no other
original quality but the power of habit."
With this observation I cannot agree; because I think it
more philosophical to resolve the power of habit into the association of ideas, than to resolve the association of ideas into habit.
The word habit, in the sense in which it is commonly employed, expresses that facility which the mind acquires, in all
its exertions, both animal and intellectual, in consequence of
practice. We apply it to the dexterity of the workman; to
the extemporary fluency of the orator; to the rapidity of the
arithmetical accountant. That this facility is the effect of practice, we know from experience to be a fact; but it does not
seem to be an ultimate fact, nor incapable of analysis.
In the Essay on Attention, I showed that the effects of practice are produced partly on the body, and partly on the mind.
The muscles which we employ in mechanical operations, become stronger, and become more obedient to the will. This
is a fact, of which it is probable that philosophy will never be
able to give any explanation.
But even in mechanical operations, the effects of practice
are produced partly on the mind; and, as far as this is the case,
they are resolvable into what philosophers call the association
of ideas, or into that general fact which Dr. Reid himself has
stated, " that trains of thinking, which, by frequent repetition,
have become familiar, spontaneously offer themselves to the
mind." In the case of habits which are purely intellectual, the
effects of practice resolve themselves completely into this principle: and it appears to me more precise and satisfactory, to
state the principle itself as a law of our constitution, than to
slur it over under the concise appellation of habit, which we
apply in common to mind and body.
Association of ideas distinguished from imagination. - The
tendency in the human mind to associate or connect its thoughts
together, is sometimes called, but very improperly, the imayination. Between these two parts of our constitution, there is,
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