Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II JAMES MILL AND THE LATER ASSOCIATIONISTS 1. James Mill The division of the association movement into periods should not be regarded as sharp and absolute. In passing from Hobbes and Locke to Hartley, or from Hartley and Brown to the Mills, we find no great break. A gradual development and broadening of the fundamental conceptions and a progressive extension of the analysis has already been noted. The same is true in the transition to the later period. Yet there appear to be sufficient grounds for grouping the ' pure associationists ' into two chronological periods. The writings of the elder Mill mark the beginning of a new stage of development. The period examined in the preceding chapter is marked by a groping after fundamental terms, and by a somewhat desultory or at least unsystematic analysis. The writers of the later period assume the fundamental notions of association, and their task is to make the analysis more orderly and far-reaching. It must be remembered that the chief concepts of the association theory were now well known to English readers; that associationism constituted one of the dominant types of philosophy; and that systems of ethics, esthetics, jurisprudence, economics, and even history and theology had been formulated upon an associational basis, either avowedly or tacitly.1 The time was 1 By the writers mentioned in Chapter I--Tucker, Alison, Adam Smith, Bentham--and their followers. Among the numerous later 37 ripe for a new analysis--not merely based on the principle of association, but conducted in that sequential way which association itself invites. James M1ll (1773-1836), in early life a clergyman of the Scottish Church and later employed in the home off1ce of the East India Company, undertook this...