ce of
images is that of "total redintegration," as e.g., recalling all the
incidents of a long voyage in chronological order, with neither
additions nor omissions. But this formula expresses what ought to be,
not what actually occurs. It supposes man reduced to a state of pure
intelligence, and sheltered from all disturbing influences. It suits the
completely systematized forms of memory, hardened into routine and
habit; but, outside of these cases, it remains an abstract concept.

To this law of ideal value, there is opposed the real and practical law
that actually obtains in the revival of images. It is rightly styled the
"law of interest" or the affective law, and may be stated thus: In every
past event the interesting parts alone revive, or with more intensity
than the others. "Interesting" here means _what affects us in some way
under a pleasing or painful form_. Let us note that the importance of
this fact has been pointed out not by the associationists (a fact
especially worth remembering) but by less systematic writers, strangers
to that school,--Coleridge, Shadworth Hodgson, and before them,
Schopenhauer. William James calls it the "ordinary or mixed
association."[15] The "law of interest" doubtless is less exact than the
intellectual laws of contiguity and resemblance. Nevertheless, it seems
to penetrate all the more in later reasoning. If, indeed, in the problem
of association we distinguish these three things--facts, laws,
causes--the practical law brings us near to causes.

Whatever the truth may be in this matter, the emotional factor brings
about new combinations by several processes.

There are the ordinary, simple cases, with a natural, emotional
foundation, depending on momentary dispositions. They exist because of
the fact that representations that have been accompanied by the same
emotional state tend later to become associated: the emotional
resemblance reunites and links disparate images. This differs from
association by contiguity, which is a repetition of experience, and from
association by resemblance in the intellectual sense. The states of
consciousness become combined, not because they have been previously
given together, not because we perceive the agreement of resemblance
between them, but because they have a common _emotional_ note. Joy,
sorrow, love, hatred, admiration, ennui, pride, fatigue, etc., may
become a center of attraction that groups images or events having
otherwise no ratio