y pictures in a row, and let him examine
each one in turn so closely that he can later recognize every one of
them; and still he will not have the adjacent pictures so associated
that each one can call up the next in order. To accomplish his last
task, he has to observe the order specifically; it is not enough that
he simply experiences pictures together. Or, again, read to a person
twenty pairs of words, asking him to notice the pairs so that later he
can respond by the second word of any pair when the first word is
given him; and read the list through three or four times, so that he
shall be able to make almost a perfect score in the expected test;
still he will have formed few associations between the contiguous
pairs, and will make a very low score if you ask him to recite the
pairs in order. Many similar experiments have yielded the same general
result--contiguity in experience and still no association.

The law of association by contiguity is unsatisfactory from a modern
standpoint because it treats only of the stimulus, and says nothing
about the response. It states, quite truly, that stimuli must be
contiguous in order that an association between them may be formed,
but it neglects to state that the association, being something in us,
must {398} be formed by our reaction to the stimuli. It is especially
necessary to consider the response because, as we have just seen, the
response is not always made and the association, therefore, not always
formed. Only if the stimuli are contiguous, can the associating
response be aroused, but they do not infallibly arouse it even if they
are contiguous.

The law of contiguity is incomplete, also, because it is not
applicable to the association of two motor acts into a cooerdinated
higher unit, or of the combination of two primary emotions into a
higher emotional unit.

In a word, the time-honored law of association is no longer
satisfactory because it does not fit into a stimulus-response
psychology. It comes down from a time when the motor side of mental
performances was largely overlooked by psychology, and when the
individual was pictured as being passively "impressed" with the
combinations of facts that were presented to his senses.

The Law of Combination

What we need, then, as an improvement on the old law of association by
contiguity, and as a supplement to the law of exercise, is some law
governing the response to two or more contiguous stimuli. Now we
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