The power of fusing ideas (and through ideas, structures)
depends upon the power of _con_fusing them; the power to confuse ideas
that are not very unlike, and that are presented to us in immediate
sequence, is mainly due to the fact of the impetus, so to speak, which
the mind has upon it. It is this which bars association from sticking to
the letter of its bond; for we are in a hurry to jump to a conclusion on
the first show of plausible pretext, and cut association's statement of
claim short by taking it as read before we have got through half of it.
We "get it into our notes, in fact," as Mr. Justice Stareleigh did in
Pickwick, and having got it once in, we are not going to get it out
again. This breeds fusion and confusion, and from this there come new
developments.
So powerful is the impetus which the mind has continually upon it that we
always, I believe, make an effort to see every new object as a repetition
of the object last before us. Objects are so varied and present
themselves so rapidly, that as a general rule we renounce this effort too
promptly to notice it, but it is always there, and as I have just said,
it is because of it that we are able to mistake, and hence to evolve new
mental and bodily developments. Where the effort is successful, there is
illusion; where nearly successful but not quite, there is a shock and a
sense of being puzzled--more or less, as the case may be; where it so
obviously impossible as not to be pursued, there is no perception of the
effort at all.
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