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law of association which play such an important part in modern empirical psychology.
REVIVAL OF IDEAS ACCORDING TO SOME WESTERN THINKERS
Before we describe the laws of association of ideas as conceived by the Indian Nyāya school, it would not be unprofitable to have a glance at the various views about them, as held by the prominent European thinkers from time to time. “All suggestions may be found” says Brown, --"to depend on prior co-existence or at least on such proximity as is itself very probable a modification of co-existence". Thus according to Brown, an idea of a thing is followed by that of a thing contiguous to it. This is the view of Hartley too. Spencer, on the contrary, laid stress on similarity and maintained that an idea revives another which is like it, According to Professor Bain contiguity and similarity are both perfectly distinct principles of association. It is supposed that by saying, --“We hunt through the mental train, excogitating from the present or some other and from similar or contrary or coadjacent. Through this process reminiscence takes place”,--Aristotle meant that not only does
ea of a thing revive that of another contiguous to it or similar to it but that the former may suggest another which is in contrast with it. Contiguity, similarity and contrast are thus the three principles of association and revival of ideas, according to Aristotle. Hume also enumerates these laws as three but according to him they are similarity, contiguity not only in Place but in Time and Cause or Effect. Thus we find that according to Hume an idea of a thing may suggest another in any of the five ways:-(1) it suggests the idea of a thing if the latter is contiguous to it in place; (2) it may revive the idea of another thing which was proximate to it in time; (3) an idea suggests another, similar to it; (4) an idea of the cause suggests the idea of the effect; (5) and conversely, the effect may suggest the cause. Hamilton, although he reduces the principles of association to two viz:—Simultaneity and Affinity and these again, ultimately to one viz:--the law of Totality or Redinte
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