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Untitled Article
Not so , Mr . Blakey . Memory and remembrance only denote the fact that somehow we do remember : association denotes that our remembrances ( pardon the expression ) suggest and recall one another in an order , determined by the order of succession of the fads remembered ; or rather , determined partly by the order of succession , and partly by the more or less interesting nature , of
those previous impressions . Cannot Mr . Blakey understand the difference between a phenomenon , and the law of the phenomenon ? The reflexion of light , and of sound , is a fact ; that the angle of reflexion is equal to the angle of incidence , is the law of that fact . And this law of nature may be something new to a person , even although he may have heard an echo , and seen his face in a mirror . In like manner a person may know that when we have seen an object or experienced a feeling , we remember it , ( which is
all that is expressed by the words faculty of memory , ) and may , notwithstanding , have yet to learn that when we have seen two objects or had two feelings together , we think of them together , and not otherwise ; and that the strength of their connexion in our remembrance , depends jointly upon the number of previous conjunctions in fact or in thought , and upon the intensity of the original impressions . Once for all , association is not memory , but the law of memory .
Now , the theory of the human mind of which Dr . Hartley was the principal author , main tans that this same law , which is the law of memory , namely , that the order of our thoughts follows the order of our sensations , is not only the law of memory , but the law of imagination , of belief , of reasoning , of the affections , of the will . This may not be true ; but it is at least very different from every other theory . But Mr . Blakey knows so little about
the Hartleian doctrine , that he propounds as a complete summary of it , the following proposition : * The advocates of association state a simple fact , that there is a connexion amongst our ideas . ' ( p . 126 . ) We exhort him to read Hartley ; or a more recent work , which has done far more for Hartley ' s theory , than Hartley himself , Mr . Mill ' s * Analysis of the Human Mind . '
As a specimen of argumentation which Mr . Blakey considers to be conclusive , we quote the following : 4 Association is the tendency of one idea to introduce another into the mind . Very well , then ; but how do we come to set it down as a general fact , that one set of ideas has an invariable tendency to introduce another set of ideas ? By experience , it must be answered . But what is experience ? Why , it is the remembrance of that which is past . "
Therefore , association is nothing but memory . We will treat Mr . Blakey with a specimen in return . The pretended science of chemistry is nothing but memory . Chemistry is the properties of simple substances , and their various
Untitled Article
664 Blakey's History of Moral Science * .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1833, page 664, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2624/page/4/
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