140 Inquiries into Human Faculty
My associated ideas were for the most part due to my own unshared experiences, and the list of them would necessarily differ widely from that which another person would draw up who might repeat my experiments. Therefore one sees clearly, and I may say, one can see measurably, how impossible it is in a general way for two grown-up persons to lay their minds side, by side together in perfect accord. The same sentence cannot produce precisely the same effect on both, and the first quick impressions that any given word in it may convey, will differ widely in the two minds.
I took pains to determine as far as feasible the dates of my life at which each of the associated ideas was first attached to the word. There were 124 cases in which identification was satisfactory, and they were distributed as in Table II.
TABLE II.
RELATIVE NUMBER OF ASSOCIATIONS FORMED AT
DIFFERENT PERIODS OF LIFE.
|
Total
number
different
Associatio
ns |
of |
|
|
|
Occurring |
|
|
Whose first
formation
was in |
| |
four times |
|
three
times |
|
|
twice. |
|
once. |
|
|
Per cent |
|
|
Per cent |
|
Per cent |
|
|
Per
cent |
|
Per cent |
|
|
48 |
1 |
39 |
|
12 |
1 |
10 |
11 |
1 |
9 |
|
9 |
1 |
7 |
16 |
1 13 |
boyhood and
youth |
|
57 |
|
46 |
|
10 |
|
8 |
8 |
|
7 |
|
6 |
|
5 |
33 |
26 |
subsequent
manhood |
|
19 |
|
15 |
|
— |
|
— |
4 |
|
3 |
|
1 |
|
1 |
14 |
11 |
quite recent
events. |
|
124 |
|
100 |
|
22 |
|
18 |
23 |
|
19 |
|
16 |
|
13 |
63 |
50 |
Totals |
It will be seen from the Table that out of the 48 earliest associations no less than 12, or one quarter of them, occurred in each of the four trials; of the associations first formed in manhood, 10, or about one-sixth of them, had a similar recurrence, but as to the 19 other associations first formed in quite recent times, not one of them occurred in the whole of the four trials. Hence we may see the greater fixity of the earlier associations, and might measurably determine
