Successive Association. -- There is another form of associa-
tion, known as successive association, a term which is com-
monly restricted to the sequence, of our ideas as they pass
through the mind. We shall discuss it in connection with
imagery and the higher cognitive functions. Even this kind
of association of ideas, however, evidently involves discrimi-
nation; for the ideas must be noticed as different, in order
that they may be separate ideas at all. And conversely, so
far as we remark differences in successive moments of con-
sciousness, we must admit the presence of associative factors
of some kind or other, uniting the several temporally distinct
contents of consciousness with one another.

Generalising, then, we may say that attention involves both
a synthetic and an analytic activity. Sometimes our primary
purpose and interest in attending is to analyse and discrim-
inate, but we cannot accomplish this without simultaneosly
employing association. And similarly, although we may be
ostensibly engaged in connecting, or associating, the various
items or our experience with one another, the execution of
our task inevitably involves us in discrimination.

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