CHAPTER XIV

THE LAW OF DISSOCIATION OR ANALYSIS

§ 38. The Process of Analysis

Important as is the action of the mind in connecting impressions with ideas and acts, ideas with ideas and acts and acts among themselves, it would be a gross mistake to restrict mental action to the single field of connections, habit formation, association. The mind works not only by association, by connecting this situation with that response, but also by dissociation or analysis, by breaking up a total situation into its elements. The abstract and general notions which we found in Part I to be essential features in the higher types of human thinking and the operations of parts of impressions or ideas which will later be found to be essential features of reasoning, are mental products which come, not by putting things together, but by separating them into parts. The bare facts of experience give only white paper, white balls, white liquids, never the thought of mere whiteness by itself; the law of association, so far as hitherto described, would lead to an interminable repetition of selections from our experience and responses, never to the original insights of the mathematical or scientific thinker; the same law in conduct would provide only a better and better selection from amongst acts, a greater skill due to the elimination of failures, never with totally new moral insights or new combinations of bodily movements. But

in fact we do separate out elements in thought which have never appeared before by themselves, but only as parts or elements of total experiences. We do come to make isolated movements which have previously been only parts of instinctive and habitual reactions. And this work of analysis of total impressions into ideas of parts and elements and qualities and of complex acts into minute separate movements is of the utmost use in giving command over the problems of thought and the activities of the body. By dividing we conquer. How this process of analysis occurs will be clear from a few simple cases.

The child at school whom we wish to feel the abstract quality of sphericity is given marbles and balls to observe. His attention is called to the orange, the gas globe, and the like. The word round or sphere is associated with all these and other objects, alike in being spheres but different in size, color, use, etc. As a result he comes to feel in connection with the word the special quality of similarity of surface at all points which to him means sphericity. Again the child to whom we wish to teach the abstract thing, number, for instance the abstract quality of fiveness, is given five peas, five sticks, five leaves, is made to draw five lines, to move his arm five times, to hold up five fingers, each time in association with the word five. He comes, by having the five quality constantly present but in connection with all sorts of other accessory qualities, to feel the numerical aspect of any group, the five aspect, by itself as a separate elementary thought in his mind.

In movements the same procedure is followed. A backward child can say th in common words but cannot make by themselves the movements needed to produce it alone. He is led to repeat that, those, they, this, then,

breathe and similar words in order to lift into separate existence the th movement, to develop direct control of it.

In all these cases the method taken to develop into a separate idea or act some aspect of a total mental state or muscular performance,-to abstract, that is, some part or quality of an experience,-is to arouse many experiences in which that aspect or part or quality is constantly present but with in each case different surroundings or context. The element of idea or impulse which is thus felt with many different associates comes to be felt with none of them, to be felt by itself as an idea, to be independent of any of them. The movement which is thus made with many different associated movements comes to be made by itself alone. BACD, EAFG, HAIJ, KALM, etc., result in a new A.

It thus seems to be a general law of mind that any element of mental life which is felt as a part of many total mental states differing in all else save its presence, comes thereby to be felt as an idea by itself, and that any movement which has been made as a part of many complex movements differing in all else save its presence comes thereby to be made as a movement by itself. This law is called the law of Dissociation by Varying Concomitants, or the Law of Analysis.1

§ 39. The Influence of the Law of Analysis

In the arithmetic of the primary school where the meanings of the numbers from one to twenty and their

1 The law of dissociation is really only one case of the law of association; it is the multitude of connections which serves to disconnect. The same general principle accounts for both association and dissociation, although the results of its workings are opposite in the two cases. When one thing has gone with another it tends to call it up and to fuse with it; but when one thing has gone with many different others it will tend to call up each of them a little and so none of them fully, and, instead of fusing with any one of them, to win an independent existence.

combinations are taught; in all inductive work in science where a general law or general notion is evolved from particular series of events or cases; in learning the meaning of but, and, notwithstanding, in spite of, etc., from their use in conversation and books; in comparing one character in literature or history with others to bring out essential points of his make-up-in short in all cases where we try to progress from vague feelings of a total fact to exact, definite feelings of its elements and of it as the compound of those elements-we depend upon the law of analysis or dissociation.

This law is the basis of the capacity to reason, i.e., to think out the solutions of novel problems. Indeed it is probable that to the workings of this law of dissociation in infancy is due the growth of thought itself and of all those mental states which we call ideas,-that but for it mental life would be entirely composed of feelings like dizziness, suffocation, nausea, weariness or faintness, feelings which we would be very conscious of and would react to violently, but which we could not turn into continued and useful thought.

The infant's feelings of things, qualities, conditions and relationships are nothing more than vague total impressions of this person, that thing, this weather, that stomach-ache and the like. (Only after many experiences, resulting in many associations and comparisons, have given the law of dissociation an opportunity to play its rôle, does he come to feel the sense qualities of objects as discriminated elements, to feel forms and colors and sizes and shapes distinct from each other. His bottle, for instance, is to him for months only a vaguely sizable thing to be taken and held in his mouth. Only after much experience does it become a thing so long, so heavy and so colored. Even in adults much of mental life never

develops into definite ideas. How few, for example, are the smells which we feel as definitely in the general odor of a cook shop as we do red and green in the colors of a landscape!

As the infant gradually dissociates the elements of color, form, size and the like from the complex things in which they inhere, so the school boy in long years dissociates the more abstract qualities, such as justice, law or liberty. And to the end of life a thinking man will be busy in analyzing his vague impressions and opinions into their elements.

The elements acquired by the action of the law of dissociation furnish new materials for the law of association to work with. As soon as the child in school feels the meanings of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, he is ready to form the associations I and 2 are 3, I and 3 are 4, I and 4 are 5, 2 and 3 are 5. As soon as a new movement comes under control, i.e., can be made by itself, it enters into associations with other movements and with mental states. The first mental connections are between particular sensory situations and responses thereto, simple modifications of existing instincts. Starting with these the law of dissociation produces the feelings of common objects, qualities, acts and relations, such as children commonly manifest in the third year of life. These new feelings as fast as they appear become associated with words, acts and with each other, so that the child by the time of entrance to school has thousands of associations between ideas, mostly between concrete particulars. With these associations further action of the law of dissociation produces general and abstract ideas. These in turn form new associations. Thus in mental growth connection and analysis, association and dissociation, putting things