THEORIES OF LEARNING: Page 45

general law of the 'association of ideas/ by which term nothing is here meant to be expressed but the order of occurrence." Mill felt the association of ideas could be either concurrent or successive, and that the association's strength was measurable in terms of its permanence, its certainty and its "facility." He further believed that frequency and vividness determined the strength of an association. David Hartley (1849) stated that there was physical basis for association of ideas. This physical basis was in the brain, he contended, and the process of association was interlocked with bodily processes and not with ideas alone. He also believed that mental life was composed of sense impressions which left copies of themselves in the form of simple ideas or sensations, and, through association, these impressions gained the ability to call up other ideas. Alexander Bain, an evolutionist and contemporary of William James, described (1855) behavior in terms of reflex and instinct. He noted that "Actions, Sensations and States of Feeling, occurring together or in close succession, tend to grow together, or cohere, in such a way that, when any one of them is afterwards presented to the mind, the others are apt to be brought up in idea." Bain was interested in determining the conditions of learning. He would have liked to be able to explain retention as a neurological process rather than as a mental function. A pioneer in objectivity, Edward L. Thorndike, the father of the theory of "connectionism" (1914), believed that simple association was not enough to insure future