ects
remembered or of objects perceived; it may include an action resolved
on. In either case, when the field is analyzed into its parts, those
parts can be shown to have proceeded from parts of fields previously
before consciousness, in consequence of one or other of the laws of
association just laid down. Those laws _run_ the mind: interest,
shifting hither and thither, deflects it; and attention, as we shall
later see, steers it and keeps it from too zigzag a course.

To grasp these factors clearly gives one a solid and simple
understanding of the psychological machinery. The 'nature,' the
'character,' of an individual means really nothing but the habitual form
of his associations. To break up bad associations or wrong ones, to
build others in, to guide the associative tendencies into the most
fruitful channels, is the educator's principal task. But here, as with
all other simple principles, the difficulty lies in the application.
Psychology can state the laws: concrete tact and talent alone can work
them to useful results.

Meanwhile it is a matter of the commonest experience that our minds may
pass from one object to another by various intermediary fields of
consciousness. The indeterminateness of our paths of association _in
concreto_ is thus almost as striking a feature of them as the uniformity
of their abstract form. Start from any idea whatever, and the entire
range of your ideas is potentially at your disposal. If we take as the
associative starting-point, or cue, some simple word which I pronounce
before you, there is no limit to the possible diversity of suggestions
which it may set up in your minds. Suppose I say 'blue,' for example:
some of you may think of the blue sky and hot weather from which we now
are suffering, then go off on thoughts of summer clothing, or possibly
of meteorology at large; others may think of the spectrum and the
physiology of color-vision, and glide into X-rays and recent physical
speculations; others may think of blue ribbons, or of the blue flowers
on a friend's hat, and proceed on lines of personal reminiscence. To
others, again, etymology and linguistic thoughts may be suggested; or
blue may be 'apperceived' as a synonym for melancholy, and a train of
associates connected with morbid psychology may proceed to unroll
themselves.

In the same person, the same word heard at different times will provoke,
in consequence of the varying marginal preoccupations, either one of a
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