same impressions, and clusters of impressions. Here these leave traces, in which the order is preserved, may be understood from the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh propositions.

"The traces which letters and words, i. e. clusters of letters, leave, afford an instance and example of this; and, as in languages, the letters are fewer than the syllables, and the syllables than the words, and the words than the sentences, so the single sensible impressions, and the small clusters of them, are comparatively few in respect of the larger clusters; and being so, they must recur more frequently, so as the sooner to beget those traces which I call the rudiments or elements of memory. When these traces or ideas begin to recur frequently, this also contributes to fix them and their order in the memory, in the same manner as the frequent impression of the objects themselves." The whole of these quotations contains nothing more nor less than an illustration of the faculty of simple me

mory.

Having said this much on the doctrine of association, considered in an intellectual point of view, let us apply the same reasoning a little further to the subjects of morals, and try if what is not in this science referred to association, may not be attributed

to the common faculty of memory. Dr. Priestley, in one of his preliminary essays, prefixed to his abridgment of Hartley's book "On Man," has the following passage, which, he thinks, furnishes the most complete and distinct illustration of his favourite associating principle. He says, "The natural progress of a passion may be most distinctly seen in that of the love of money, which is acquired so late in life that every step in the progress may easily be traced. No person is born with the love of money, as such; a child is, indeed, pleased with a piece of coin, as he is with other things, the form or the splendour of which strikes his eye; but this

is

very different from that emotion which a man who has been accustomed to the use of money, and has known the want of it, feels upon being presented with a guinea or a shilling. This emotion is a very complex one, the component parts of which are indistinguishable, but which have been separately connected with the idea of money, and the uses of it. For, after a child has received the first species of pleasure from a piece of money as a mere plaything, he receives additional pleasure from the possession of it, by connecting with the idea of it the idea of the various pleasures and advantages which it is able to procure him-and, in time, that

complex idea of pleasure, which was originally formed from the various pleasures which it was the means of procuring, is so intimately connected with the idea of money, that it becomes an object of a proper passion; so that men are capable of pursuing it without ever reflecting on the use that it may possibly be of to them."

Now, may we not ask, how is a child enabled to connect the various pleasures and advantages which it receives from time to time by the spending of money, but by the operation of his memory? You give him a piece of money; he goes and buys sweetmeats with it; he receives pleasure from the eating of them; and the next time he sees any money, he wishes to have it, because the pleasure he received from eating the last purchase comes fresh into his recollection. Why refer a case like this to a principle of association, when it as clearly and as plainly belongs to the province of memory, as words can be made to convey any thing moral or intellectual? The Doctor says, that various pleasures are somehow connected in the child's mind with the money. Certainly; no one doubts the fact. But this connexion is nothing but what mankind, in all ages, have attributed to memory. To refer a fact such as Dr. Priestley has stated above, to any other

source, could arise only from whim or caprice, or the most determined and bigoted love of system.

The origin of an affection is accounted for in a similar manner by Mr. Belsham, a zealous advocate of Hartley's doctrine. He says, "I love my friend -this affection is compounded of complacency and good will. I think upon him with complacency, because he possesses many virtues, because he has been the immediate cause of many pleasing sensations and recollections, because his idea is associated with many other pleasures than those which he has directly produced. I desire his happiness from a sense of gratitude, from the delight I take in seeing him happy, and from the conviction that the greater his happiness is, the greater will be his capacity for communicating happiness to others, &c. These feelings coalesce into a complex and vivid affection; I call it friendship; it associates itself with the person of my friend, with his idea, with his name, and with many circumstances naturally or fortuitously connected with him."*

This is an illustration of the principle of association. We will pass over, without notice, two or three attempts in this quotation at something very like a begging of the question. The plain inter

• Belsham's Elements of the Philosophy of the Mind, pp. 208-9.

pretation of the passage is, that we feel an emotion after we follow a certain course, and this course is founded upon the principle of remembrance. We recollect that our friend has performed many virtuous and praise-worthy deeds; we remember that he has loaded us with benefits; we accordingly feel thankful for his kindness, and entertain a wish that his happiness may be as unbounded as his goodness. But what is there new in all this? What additional light is thrown upon the operation of our moral powers and affections by such a common-place statement as this? What new facts are here unfolded, or new logical arrangements exhibited, which can authorize the authors of such statements as the above quotations furnish to come forward to the world as the happy discoverers of a moral and metaphysical system, which ought, in their conception, to supersede all others, on account of its comprehensive nature and superlative excellence?

Let us quote a few more sentences from Dr. Hartley, shewing how men obtain notions of virtue and vice, and we will there find that he is only describing the faculty of memory. He says, "We come, in the last place, to consider moral accomplishments and defects, or virtue and vice. Now it is very evident, that the many advantages, public