the association of
ideas.

Frequent has been the support, and wide the acceptance of this
supposition, and yet I suppose that no two consecutive sentences were
ever written in defence of it, without involving either a contradiction
or a confusion of terms. Thus Alison, "There are scenes undoubtedly more
beautiful than Runnymede, yet to those who recollect the great event
that passed there, there is no scene perhaps which so strongly seizes on
the imagination." Here we are wonder-struck at the audacious obtuseness
which would prove the power of imagination by its overcoming that very
other power (of inherent beauty) whose existence the arguer denies. For
the only logical conclusion which can possibly be drawn from the above
sentence is, that imagination is _not_ the source of beauty, for
although no scene seizes so strongly on the imagination, yet there are
scenes "more beautiful than Runnymede." And though instances of
self-contradiction as laconic and complete as this are to be found in
few writers except Alison, yet if the arguments on the subject be fairly
sifted from the mass of confused language with which they are always
encumbered and placed in logical form, they will be found invariably to
involve one of these two syllogisms, either, association gives pleasure,
and beauty gives pleasure, therefore association is beauty. Or, the
power of association is stronger than the power of beauty, therefore the
power of association _is_ the power of beauty.

Sec. 8. Association. Is, 1st, rational. It is of no efficiency as a cause
of beauty.

Nevertheless it is necessary for us to observe the real value and
authority of association in the moral system, and how ideas of actual
beauty may be affected by it, otherwise we shall be liable to
embarrassment throughout the whole of the succeeding argument.

Association is of two kinds. Rational and accidental. By rational
association I understand the interest which any object may bear
historically as having been in some way connected with the affairs or
affections of men; an interest shared in the minds of all who are aware
of such connection: which to call beauty is mere and gross confusion of
terms, it is no theory to be confuted, but a misuse of language to be
set aside, a misuse involving the positions that in uninhabited
countries the vegetation has no grace, the rock no dignity, the cloud no
color, and that the snowy summits of the Alps receive no loveline