We may here note the analogy between these two modes of association--that of persons and that of mental elements. In both cases, according to the plain man’s view of the matter, we are dealing with wholly casual conjunctions of units naturally independent. The associates in either case need no better reason for now being together than that they had been together before. Their connection expresses nothing intimate or essential in their natures, and, if they fall apart again, they will not be seriously affected by the separation.
Now, of course, this idea of mere conjunction is not strictly true even of the connections between the most casual associates. Every association, whether of comrades or of ideas, is a connection between qualities, and therefore a general connection between the natures of the related terms. People are not really companions for no reason at all; and ideas are not really units or atoms which stick together by mere juxtaposition, so that when one is pulled up out of the Hades of oblivion it drags the other with it. Both the association of companions and the association of ideas are tendencies in which some general connection of qualities is at work, and expresses itself through the detail of the actual surroundings, so far as an opening is left to it. When the association is made explicit by both members being present together, there is an outlet or utterance of the nature of the associates which there is not when they are separated.
{ 159} But though all this is true, and can be detected in cases of association by careful analysis, it is, relatively speaking, the fact that commonplace association depends upon qualities which are so superficial that they may set up a tendency to connection between any units which are members of the same world. And, therefore, as compared with any more thorough-going kind of connection, such association may be set down as casual, and as determined by the mere chance of juxtaposition.
(ii.) Let us compare the kind of connection just described as association with that which we have agreed to call organisation.
Associates, [1] we saw, were together, as might roughly be said, simply because they found themselves together. That is to say, they were, after their association, what they were before it, and would not be seriously affected if they were to be separated. Connections of this kind are essentially between unit and unit. They fall short of the nature of a plan which determines a great range of elements, variously but with reference to an identical operation.