Observations placeholder

Baruch Spinoza - Ethics

If the human body has once been affected by two or more bodies at the same time, then when the mind subsequently imagines one of them, it will immediately recollect the others also ….. from this we clearly understand what memory is.  For it is nothing other than a certain connection of ideas involving the nature of things which are outside the human body – a connection which is in the mind according to the order and connection of the affections of the human  body.............

The connection of the data happens according to the order and connection of the affections of the human body in order to distinguish it from the connection of ideas which happens according to the order of the intellect, but which the mind perceives through their first causes..........

And from this we clearly understand why the mind, from the thought of one thing, immediately passes to the thought of another, which has no likeness to the first; as, for example, from the thought of the word pomum, a Roman will immediately pass to the though of the fruit (viz an apple) which has no similarity to that articulate sound and nothing in common with it except the body of the same man has often heard the word pomum while he saw the fruit.

And in this way, each if us will pass from one thought to another, as each one's associations has ordered the images of things ….. for example, a soldier having seen traces of a horse in the sand, will immediately pass from the thought of a horse to the thought of horsemen and from that to the thought of war and so on. But a farmer will pass from the thought of a horse to the thought of a plough, and then to that of a field and so on