results only in slight agreement.[23]
For my own part, I count myself among those contemporaries who admit
mediate association, and they are the greater number. Scripture, who has
made a special study of the subject, and who has been able to note all
the intermediate conditions between almost clear consciousness and the
unconscious, considers the existence of mediate association as proven.
In order to pronounce as an illusion a fact that is met with so often in
daily experience, and one that has been studied by so many excellent
observers, there is required more than experimental investigations (the
conditions of which are often artificial and unnatural), some of which,
moreover, conclude for the affirmative.

This form of association is produced, like the others, now by
contiguity, now by resemblance. The example given by Hamilton belongs to
the first type. In the experiments by Scripture are found some of the
second type--e.g., a red light recalled, through the vague memory of a
flash of strontium light, a scene of an opera.

It is clear that by its very nature mediate association can give rise to
novel combinations. Contiguity itself, which is usually only repetition,
becomes the source of unforeseen relations, thanks to the elimination of
the middle term. Nothing, moreover, proves that there may not sometimes
be several latent intermediate terms. It is possible that _A_ should
call up _D_ through the medium of _b_ and _c_, which remain below the
threshold of consciousness. It seems even impossible not to admit this
in the hypothesis of the subconscious, where we see only the two end
links of the chain, without being able to allow a break of continuity
between them.

2. In his determination of the regulating causes of association of
ideas, Ziehen designates one of these under the name of "constellation,"
which has been adopted by some writers. This may be enunciated thus: The
recall of an image, or of a group of images, is in some cases the result
of a sum of predominant tendencies.

An idea may become the starting point of a host of associations. The
word "Rome" can call up a hundred. Why is one called up rather than
another, and at such a moment rather than at another? There are some
associations based on contiguity and on resemblance which one may
foresee, but how about the rest? Here is an idea _A_; it is the center
of a network; it can radiate in all directions--_B, C, D, E, F, etc._
Why does it call up now