kaleidoscopic screen of your thoughts. This is due to laws that govern
the association of ideas.

These laws are, in substance, that the way in which judgments and
ideas are classified and stored away, and the order in which they are
brought forth into consciousness depends upon what other judgments and
ideas they have been associated with most _habitually_, _recently_,
_closely_ and _vividly_.

There are, therefore, four Prime Laws of Association--the Law of
Habit, the Law of Recency, the Law of Contiguity and the Law of
Vividness.

Every idea that can possibly arise in your thoughts has its vast
array of associates, to each of which it is linked by some one element
in common. Thus, you see or dream of a yellow flower, and the one
property of yellowness links the idea of that flower with everything
you ever before saw or dreamed of that was similarly hued.

[Sidenote: _The Bonds of Intellect_]

But the yellow-flower thought is not tied to all these countless
associates by bonds of equal strength. And which associate shall come
next to mind is determined by the four Prime Laws of Association.

The Law of Habit requires that _frequency_ of association be the one
test to determine what idea shall next come into consciousness, while
the Laws of Recency, Contiguity and Vividness emphasize respectively
recency of occurrence, closeness in point of space and intensity of
impression. Which law and which element shall prevail is all a
question of degree.

The most important of these laws is the _Law of Habit_. In obedience
to this law, _the next idea to enter the mind will be the one that has
been most frequently associated with the interesting part of the
subject you are now thinking of_.

The sight of a pile of manuscript on your desk ready for the printer,
the thought of a printer, the word "printer," spoken or printed, calls
to mind the particular printer with whom you have been dealing for
some years.

The word "cocoa," the thought of a cup of cocoa, the mental picture
of a cup of cocoa, may conjure with it not merely a steaming cup
before the mind's eye and the flavor of the contents, but also a
daintily clad figure in apron and cap bearing the brand of some
well-known cocoa manufacturer.

If a typist or pianist has learned one system of fingering, it is
almost impossible to change, because each letter, each note on the
keyboard is associated with the idea of movement in a particular
finger. Constant use ha