strongest—namely, that with the immediately succeeding term. But series of ideas are never left to themselves. The rich and quickly changing order of events brings them into the most manifold relations. They return with their members in the most varied combinations. And then, under certain circumstances, the stronger of these less strong associations between more distant terms must find opportunity to authenticate their existence and to enter into the inner course of events in an effective way. It is easy to see how they must favor a more rapid growth, a richer differentiation, and a many-sided ramification of the ideas which characterise the controlled mental life. Of course they also favor a greater manifoldness, and so apparently a greater arbitrariness and irregularity, in mental events.
Before I proceed further, I wish to add a few words concerning the above mentioned (p.91) derivation of the association of successive ideas from the unitary consciousness of a unitary soul. There is a certain danger in bringing together a present result with one found previously. I mentioned above (p.47) that the number of syllables which I can repeat without error after a single reading is about seven. One can, with a certain justification, look upon this number as a measure of the ideas of this sort which I can grasp in a single unitary conscious act. As we just now saw, associations are formed of noticeable strength over more than seven intervening members, therefore between the beginning and end of a nine-syllable series. And on account of the size of the numbers obtained and the nature of their gradation, it seems probable that, even with a larger number of syllables, connections would be formed between their extremes. If, however, associations are built between members too far separated to be held together in a single conscious act, it is no longer possible to explain the presence of those associations on the basis of the simultaneous presence of the united ideas in consciousness.
However, I recognise that those for whom such a derivation is a cherished matter are not necessarily forced by the above discussion to abandon their conception. Such are those who consider the unitary acts of a unitary soul as something more original, intelligible, transparent or better worthy of belief than the simple facts of association described above, so that the reduction of the latter to the former would be a noteworthy
