The Connection of Ideas

Simple Ideas are Connected by Resemblance, Contiguity, and Cause and Effect to Create Complex Ideas

All simple ideas may be:

• separated by the imagination, and
• united again in what form it pleases.

This separation and unity is guided by universal principles which render it always uniform with itself at all times and places.

If ideas were entirely loose and unconnected:

• chance alone would join them, and
• it would be impossible for the same simple ideas to regularly become complex ones without some associating quality which:
• binds those ideas, and
• naturally leads from one idea into another.

This uniting principle among ideas is not an inseparable connection because the imagination can remove it.

Of all our faculties, the imagination is the most free.

It can join two ideas even without that uniting principle. We are only to regard it as a gentle force which commonly prevails.

It is the cause why languages so nearly correspond to each other. Nature points out to everyone those simple ideas which are most proper to be united into a complex one.

This association arises from three qualities by which the mind is conveyed from one idea to another:

• resemblance
• contiguity in time or place
• cause and effect

Resemblance

We do not need to prove:

• that these qualities produce an association among ideas, and
• that the appearance of one idea naturally introduces another idea.

In the course of our thinking:

• our imagination runs easily from one idea to any other idea that resembles it, and
• this resemblance alone is a sufficient bond for the imagination.

Contiguity

The senses, in changing their objects, need to:

• change those bonds regularly, and
• take those bonds as they lie contiguous to each other.

By habit, the imagination:

• acquires the same method of thinking, and
• runs along the parts of space and time in conceiving its objects.

Cause and Effect

We shall examine the connection made by the relation of cause and effect later.

Only the relation of cause and effect:

• produces a stronger connection in the imagination, and
• makes one idea more readily recall another idea.

To understand the full extent of these relations, we must consider that two objects are connected together in the imagination when:

• an object, Object X, is immediately resembling, contiguous to, or the cause of the other object, Object Y, and
• a third object, Object Z is interposed between them which resembles, is contiguous to, or is the cause of both.

This may be carried on to a great length, with the relation getting weaker.

For example, cousins in the fourth degree are connected by causation.

They are less close than brothers, and much less close than child and parent.

In general, all the relations of blood:

• depend on cause and effect, and
• are esteemed near or remote, according to the number of connecting causes interposed between the persons.

Motion Transfer in Bodies

The relation of causation is the most extensive of the three.

Object A is the cause of Object B if it:

• causes the existence of Object B, or
• causes Object B’s actions.

It is easy to imagine how such an influence of Object A on Object B may connect them in the imagination because:

• the action of Object B arises from the action of Object A, seen in a different light, and

Object A continues its existence just as Object B exists.

Two objects are connected by the relation of cause and effect when:

• Object A produces an action in Object B, and
• Object A has a power of producing an action in Object B.

This is the source of all the relations of interest and duty, which:

• men use to influence each other in society, and
• places men in the ties of government and subordination.

A master is one who has a power of directing the actions of a servant, arising from force or agreement.

A judge is one who, in all disputed cases, can fix the property of anything between the members of society by his opinion.

When a person has any power, only the exertion of the will is needed to convert the power into action.

The subject’s obedience is a pleasure and advantage to his superior in every case. These are the principles of union or cohesion among our simple ideas.

In our memory, our simple ideas are connected by an inseparable connection.

But in our imagination, these principles of resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect, replace that inseparable connection.

This is a kind of attraction, which:

• have extraordinary effects in both the mental world and the natural world, and
• has many, various forms.

Its effects are everywhere conspicuous.

But its causes are:

• mostly unknown, and
• must be resolved into original qualities of human nature, which I will not explain.

A true philosopher must:

• be content after establishing any doctrine on a sufficient number of experiments, and
• restrain the intemperate desire of searching into causes, when he sees a further examination would lead him into obscure and uncertain speculations.

In this case, his inquiry would be much better employed in examining the effects, than the causes of his principle.

The most remarkable effects of this union or association of ideas are those complex ideas which:

• are the common subjects of our thoughts and reasoning, and
• generally arise from some principle of union among our simple ideas.

These complex ideas may be divided into Relations, Modes, and Substances.

We shall briefly:

• examine each of these, and
• subjoin some considerations on our general and specific ideas.

These are the elements of this philosophy.