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 INFLUENCE OF CASUAL ASSOCIATIONS.; 247
a subject on which many important remarks, (though expres:edt
in a form different from that which modern philosophers have
introduced, and, perhaps, not altogether so precise and accurate,) are to be found in the Discourses of Epictetus, and in
the Meditations of Antoninus. This doctrine of the Stoical
school Dr. Akenside has in view in the following passage:"Action treads the path
In which Opinion says he follows good,
Or flies fiom evil; and Opinion gives
Report of good or evil, as the scene
the sense in which I employ these words, in heightening the pleasure or
the pain produced on the mind by external objects, will appear from the
following rernumks:1. As far as the association of ideas operates in heightening pleasure or
pnin, the mind is passive: and accordingly, where such associations are a
soulce of inconvenience, they are seldom to be cured by an effort of our
volition., or even by reasoning; but by the gradual formation of contrary
associations. Imagination is an active exertion of the mind; and although it may often be difficult to restrain it, it is plainly distinguishable
in theory from the associations now mentioned.
2. In every case in which:the association of ideas operates, it is implied
that some pleasure or pain is recalled which was felt by the mind before. I
visit, for example, a scene where I have been once happy; and the sight of
it affects me, on that account, with a degree of pleasure, which I should
not have received from any other scene equally beautiful. I shall not
inquire, whether, in such cases, the associated pleasure arises immediately
upon the sight of the object, and without the intervention of any train of
thoughlt; or wrlcether it is produced by the recollection and conception of
former occurrences which the perception recalls. On neither supposition
does it inply the exercise of that creative power of the mind to which we
have given the name of lin-gination. It is true, that commonly, on suchl
occasions, imiaginaltion is busy; and our pleasure is much heightened by
the coloring which she gives to the objects of memory. But the difference
between the effects which arise from the operation of this faculty, and those
which result from association, is not, on that account, the less real.
The influence of imagination on happiness is chiefly felt by cultivated
minds. That of association extends to all ranks of men, and furnishes the
chief instrument of education; insomuch that whoever has the regulation
of the associations of another from early infancy, is, to a great degree, the
arbiter of his happiness or misery.
Somne very ingcenious writers have employed the word association in so