ciple of psychical life than that this suggestion is simply one mode of habit. The common principle at the basis of both is that every spiritual exercise leaves in the soul a tendency to its repetition. This tendency is produced, as we especially perceive in many associations of thought, even when the exercise may have been only once experienced. But we do not call such a tendency a habit, unless it both result from many similar experiences, and is causative of frequent repetitions. Suggestion cannot be resolved into habit, nor habit into suggestion; but they are closely related through a common origin.

The term "habit" defined.

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Let us dwell for a moment on the term "habit," which, because of its various meanings, may be the ground of some confusion. This word is the exact Latin equivalent of the Greek eğıs, which signifies "a holding," or "a holding of one's self," - that is, the condition of anything as to its internal state, or constitution. In this sense we yet speak of nervous, phlegmatic, healthful, and diseased habits of the body. Ordinarily, however, the term signifies a tendency acquired by repetition, and causative of the frequent performance of some action. We speak of habits of study, of industry, of thought, of virtue. This is the meaning in which we have used the word while inquiring whether every suggestive potency is a habit. Finally, we apply the term, not to the tendency, but to the action, or mode of action, resulting from it, considered as thus resultant. We say it was his habit to study earnestly, to take snuff, to speak loudly. To express this meaning the word "custom" is often employed; and in this signification a habit or custom differs but little from a practice, the distinction being that the latter does not suggest the existence of a corresponding tendency.

The notion of facility naturally connects itself with that of habit, and is sometimes suggested by it, but is not included in it. We cannot agree with Professor Stewart, who defines habit as an acquired facility, and who says that "the dexterity of the workman, the fluency of the orator, the rapidity of the accountant," are habits; they are rather results accompanying habits.

Differences of view exist as to the extent of the office of the suggestive power. The associationalists make this power the source of all our ideas save those which may be regarded as impressions from without; and they account for belief and memory, judgment and reasoning, by the union of associated conceptions. The formation of such doctrines arises from a superficial analysis of the facts of intellectual life, from an undue desire for simplicity, and from a disposition to interpret the laws of spirit by

a reference to those of matter. No views could be more repugnant either to the common judgment of men or to severe philosophical inquiry.

At the same time we should mark the pervading influence of the suggestive power. While association does not of itself form new conceptions or convictions, nor even analyze and combine those already in possession, it is the agency through which past thinkings are made present, and from which our higher faculties receive the greater part of the materials which they elaborate. Without this power of suggestion, memory and recollection, fantasy and imagination, and the processes of reason could never be experienced.

Association

not limited

to ideas of accidental connection. Kant, Bruckner.

3. Some writers confine the operations of the associative power to thoughts which have only an accidental connection with each other, referring to some other faculty suggestions which make use of the necessary relations of things. Kant limits the law of association to "empirical ideas." Bruckner, the earnest disciple of Leibnitz, defines association as "non quævis naturalis et necessaria idearum conjunctio, sed quæ fortuita est, aut per consuetudinem vel affectum producitur, qua ideæ, quæ nullum naturalem habent inter se nexum, ita copulantur, ut, recurrente una, tota earum catena se conspiciendam intellectui præbeat." The question might be regarded as one of terms, though it may also be used in support of the theory that a certain class of our ideas suggest each other aside from any previous association.

To us such a doctrine seems not absurd, yet uncalled for. Conceptions whose connection, as setting forth a true necessity, has a necessitudinal reference, when once conjoined in the mind, may thereafter suggest each other in precisely the same way as those which have merely an accidental connection. There is no good reason to question that they may and do suggest each other under the law of redintegration. This is a sufficient account of those associations whereby we are enabled to reason from cause to effect and conversely, by applying that knowledge of laws which we have obtained from experience. Seeing the outside of a book, the printing on its pages is suggested; whereupon judgment adopts this conception and asserts its truth. Even our notions of those things which are connected by absolute, or ontological, as distinguished from empirical, necessity, suggest each other according to the ordinary law of association, and need no other law to explain their conjunction.

This principle does not account for their first union, nor for the first production of any intuitional conceptions and convictions. These originate in the immediate perceptions of the

mind. Afterwards, however, redintegration may reproduce them together in memory and in imagination. Thus, in noticing any action, we at once perceive it not simply as an action, but as the action of some power residing in some substance; after which, even in dreaming, action, power, and substance are mutually suggestive.

But should any think that one of these ideas would suggest another without such previous perception, that it would do so by reason of the very constitution of the intellect, this may be allowed as probable or, at the least, credible; to this extent only, Kant's doctrine of the intuitions might be accepted.

illustrated.

Pertain im

conceptions,

jects.

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CHAPTER XXVI.

ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS.

Defined and 1. ANALYSIS and synthesis are two modes of mental activity which are to be distinguished from thought, mediately to but which constantly take place in connection with not to ob- thought and with belief. They affect equally the working of these primary powers, because belief is experienced only as an attachment of thought. The terms. analysis" and "synthesis" are the Greek equivalents of the Latin resolutio and compositio; they literally signify "a taking apart" and "a putting together." So far as the intrinsic meaning of the words is concerned, analysis and synthesis might express any kind of separation and of union. In chemistry analysis is the actual separation, for scientific purposes, of any compound substance into its material elements; and, for aught we see, any actual uniting of elements so as to form a compound , might be called a synthesis.

Ordinarily, however, in philosophy these expressions refer to a kind of sundering and joining in thought of the elements or constitutive parts of things. In other words, analysis is the separating of the conception of an object into the conceptions of its several parts; while synthesis is the uniting of the conceptions of the several parts into that of the one object. Our conception of an ordinary triangle might be analyzed into those of a plane surface, of three straight sides, of three angles, and of certain special relations in which these things may be and often are conjoined. Our conception of a pin might be resolved into those of a short stiff wire, of a head, of a point, of the mutual relations of these parts, and of the fitness of the little

.

instrument for a certain use. Our conception of an apple may be decomposed into those of fruit, of a general size and shape, of certain contents of seeds and an eatable body enclosed within the smooth peel, of a peculiar taste and juiciness, and of the mutual relatedness of these elements. A synthesis would take place when, from any of the foregoing descriptions, the notion of a triangle or a pin or an apple should be formed. Such a synthesis gives a more perfect conception of the object than we can have without the preparatory analysis; the expression of it in language is what we mean by logical definition.

Ideas often admit of analysis when the objects of them cannot be literally taken to pieces. The sides of a triangle could never be removed from the plane surface so as to leave the latter by itself; nor could the angles be removed from the sides. In defining a sphere we think of a solid body of a certain shape; this shape could not exist in separation from the body. A vow is a promise made to God; but in analyzing a vow, though we can think separately of the promise and of its direction, we cannot literally take them apart. The separation of parts or elements, where it is possible, may assist analysis, but it is far from being the counterpart of the operation in the mind. If the constituents of a tree were so separated that one could see the roots in one place, the trunk in another, the branches and twigs in another, and the leaves in another, the ideas thus obtained would not give the analytic conception of a tree. There would be need to see, or to construct in imagination, a tree with all its parts in their proper relations to one another. Even chemical analysis is so called by reference to an inward perception of elements, not as they may be in actual separation, but as they are in combination. It aims at that mental analysis which would ascertain and separately consider the elements as they exist in their relations to each other in the compound.

In short, by analysis, we think separately of the parts or elements of an object, but do not think of them as separated. On the contrary, we think of them as related and united to each other; and this last conception, that of the mutual relation of the constituents, is often the most important result of our intellectual work. Let it be borne in mind that analysis and synthesis are operations which affect our ideas; they are not operations which affect the objects of the ideas. Sometimes we speak of the analysis of this or that object, the analysis of some battle or some crime or some painting or some geographical territory. But this means only a detailed description in other words, an analytic setting forth of our conception of the object.

Again, in analytic as well as in synthetic thought we think

of all the elements of an object, including the relations of the parts to each other, at the same time. The difference is that in analytic thinking we also regard each element successively with a special exercise of attention, while in synthetic thought we do not do so. In analysis we give separate but not exclusive attention to each element. Modern psychology teaches that the mind can think of more than one object at once. In synthetic conception we think of but one object composed of several parts; in analytic conception we not only think of the whole object, but also, and with a special exercise of energy, consider successively each several part as related to the rest: we may even be said to think of two objects, the first being the analyzed whole, and the second, each part as it is specially considered. In analysis our attention is more or less drawn off the whole to each part in its turn; in synthesis it is more equally distributed. Yet we do not in analysis give exclusive thought to any element, forgetful of its place in the whole; when such exclusive thinking takes place, analysis has passed into abstraction.

For this reason, and in strict accordance with the Greek derivation of the word, analysis might be defined "a loosening up,' rather than an entire separation, of the elements of a compound notion. We cannot deny, however, that the conception of analysis may be so enlarged as to include not only the first separation of the constituent thoughts from one another, but also their entire abstraction into independent notions. The word is employed sometimes in this secondary sense. Having analyzed the idea of ordinary milk into those of a fluid, - white, sweet, nourishing, secreted by the cow, and a common article of food, we might say that the notions "fluid," "whiteness,' "sweetness, nourishment," ," "secretion," "food," were obtained by analysis from the conception "milk;" and this would be true though, in addition to analysis proper, abstraction was needed.

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From the nature of the case the analytic conception is not so instantaneous as the synthetic, because, in addition to the thought of the whole, it includes a successive attention to every part. When, after careful analysis, we reunite the parts of a notion, our thought is more perfect than it was at first. Our conception is freed from any obscurity or indistinctness. Nevertheless, it is again properly styled synthetic.

vision, and

2. Again, let us note that analysis is not the diviAnalysis distinguished sion - that is, the logical division — of notions, and from the disynthesis is not the generalization of notions. Logical division takes place when, by the successive addieralization, tion of differences to some generic idea, we form various specific conceptions. Certain differences

synthesis from the gen

of ideas.