A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins.

  • Mary Whiton Calkins
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    occurred either simultaneously or successively; the index suggests that Xn and Yn are past experiences. Partial association is the association of elements of con¬ sciousness or of groups of elements. Its most extreme case, which James aptly calls ‘focalized association,’ is the observed connection between one single element and another elemental or complex experience. This type of association is more varied in form and less obviously attributed to con¬ tinuity in past experience, and must therefore be considered in more detail. First of all, let us assure ourselves that the partial asso¬ ciation does indeed involve the assumed identity of its terms with past experiences, which were either simultaneous or successive. We may select, as an extreme instance, the asso¬ ciation implied in these verses of Shelley: — “And the hyacinth, purple and white and blue, Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew Of music, so delicate, soft and intense, It was felt like an odor within the sense.” Now, it is in the highest degree improbable that Shelley had so often or so vividly experienced together the fra¬ grance of hyacinths and the sound of bells that the one should suggest the other. At first sight, therefore, this seems to be a case of association which does not involve an assumed identity of the connected terms with past experiences occurring together. But on closer scrutiny we discover that the actual connection, for Shelley, between imagination of sound and perception of fragrance was the consciousness of the bell-shape of the flower. None of the other elements of the perception of the hyacinths, the consciousness, for example, of their color, their height, their texture, has any connection with the imagi-
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