by this
person;--in this brief moment, in this dim, illegible short-hand of
the mind he had just escaped the speeches of the Attorney and
Solicitor-General over again; the gaunt figure of Mr. Pitt glared by
him; the walls of a prison enclosed him; and he felt the hands of the
executioner near him, without knowing it till the tremor and disorder of
his nerves gave information to his reasoning faculties that all was
not well within. That is, the same state of mind was recalled by one
circumstance in the series of association that had been produced by the
whole set of circumstances at the time, though the manner in which this
was done was not immediately perceptible. In other words, the feeling of
pleasure or pain, of good or evil, is revived, and acts instantaneously
upon the mind, before we have time to recollect the precise objects
which have originally given birth to it.(2) The incident here mentioned
was merely, then, one case of what the learned understand by the
_association of ideas_: but all that is meant by feeling or common sense
is nothing but the different cases of the association of ideas, more
or less true to the impression of the original circumstances, as reason
begins with the more formal development of those circumstances, or
pretends to account for the different cases of the association of ideas.
But it does not follow that the dumb and silent pleading of the former
(though sometimes, nay often, mistaken) is less true than that of its
babbling interpreter, or that we are never to trust its dictates without
consulting the express authority of reason. Both are imperfect, both are
useful in their way, and therefore both are best together, to correct or
to confirm one another. It does not appear that in the singular instance
above mentioned, the sudden impression on the mind was superstition or
fancy, though it might have been thought so, had it not been proved by
the event to have a real physical and moral cause. Had not the same face
returned again, the doubt would never have been properly cleared up,
but would have remained a puzzle ever after, or perhaps have been soon
forgot.--By the law of association as laid down by physiologists, any
impression in a series can recall any other impression in that series
without going through the whole in order; so that the mind drops the
intermediate links, and passes on rapidly and by stealth to the more
striking effects of pleasure or pain which have naturally taken