sition to associate false ideas too
strongly in more important instances, we shall perceive the necessity
of correcting it by education.

Locke tells us of a young man, who, having been accustomed to see an
old trunk in the room with him when he learned to dance, associated
his dancing exertions so strongly with the sight of this trunk, that
he could not succeed by any voluntary efforts in its absence. We have,
in our remarks upon attention,[82] pointed out the great
inconveniences to which those are exposed who acquire associated
habits of intellectual exertion; who cannot speak, or write, or think,
without certain habitual aids to their memory or imagination. We must
further observe, that incessant vigilance is necessary in the moral
education of children disposed to form strong associations; they are
liable to sudden and absurd dislikes or predilections, with respect to
persons, as well as things; they are subject to caprice in their
affections and temper, and liable to a variety of mental infirmities,
which, in different degrees, we call passion or madness. Locke tells
us, that he knew a man who, after having been restored to health by a
painful operation, had so strongly associated the idea and figure of
the operator with the agony he had endured, that though he
acknowledged the obligation, and felt gratitude towards this friend
who had saved him, he never afterwards could bear to see his
benefactor. There are some people who associate so readily and
incorrigibly the idea of any pain or insult they have received from
another, with his person and character, that they can never afterwards
forget or forgive. They are hence disposed to all the intemperance of
hatred and revenge; to the chronic malice of a Jago, or the acute
pangs of an Achilles. Homer, in his speech of Achilles to Agamemnon's
mediating ambassadors, has drawn a strong and natural picture of the
progress of anger. It is worth studying as a lesson in metaphysics.
Whenever association suggests to the mind of Achilles the injury he
has received, he loses his reason, and the orator works himself up
from argument to declamation, and from declamation to desperate
resolution, through a close linked connection of ideas and
sensations.

The insanities of ambition, avarice, and vanity, originate in early
mistaken associations. A feather, or a crown, or an alderman's chain,
or a cardinal's hat, or a purse of yellow counters, are unluckily
associated in the minds