In our more serious thinking or
discourse this is so observable that any particular thought, which
breaks in upon the regular tract or chain of ideas, is immediately
remarked and rejected. And even in our wildest and most wandering
reveries, nay in our very dreams, we shall find, if we reflect, that
the imagination ran not altogether at adventures, but that there was
still a connexion upheld among the different ideas, which succeeded
each other. Were the loosest and freest conversation to be
transcribed, there would immediately be observed something which
connected it in all its transitions. Or where this is wanting, the
person who broke the thread of discourse might still inform you,
that there had secretly revolved in his mind a succession of
thought, which had gradually led him from the subject of conversation.
Among different languages, even where we cannot suspect the least
connexion or communication, it is found, that the words, expressive of
ideas, the most compounded, do yet nearly correspond to each other:
a certain proof that the simple ideas, comprehended in the compound
ones, were bound together by some universal principle, which had an
equal influence on all mankind.
19. Though it be too obvious to escape observation, that different
ideas are connected together; I do not find that any philosopher has
attempted to enumerate or class all the principles of association; a
subject, however, that seems worthy of curiosity.
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