9.  Wrong connexion of ideas a great Cause of Errors.

This wrong connexion in our minds of ideas in themselves loose and independent of one another, has such an influence, and is of so great force to set us awry in our actions, as well moral as natural, passions, reasonings, and notions themselves, that perhaps there is not any one thing that deserves more to be looked after.

10.  As instance.

The ideas of goblins and sprites have really no more to do with darkness than light:  yet let but a foolish maid inculcate these often on the mind of a child, and raise them there together, possibly he shall never be able to separate them again so long as he lives, but darkness shall ever afterwards bring with it those frightful ideas, and they shall be so joined, that he can no more bear the one than the other.

11.  Another instance.

A man receives a sensible injury from another, thinks on the man and that action over and over, and by ruminating on them strongly, or much, in his mind, so cements those two ideas together, that he makes them almost one; never thinks on the man, but the pain and displeasure he suffered comes into his mind with it, so that he scarce distinguishes them, but has as much an aversion for the one as the other.  Thus hatreds are often begotten from slight and innocent occasions, and quarrels propagated and continued in the world.

12.  A third instance.

A man has suffered pain or sickness in any place; he saw his friend die in such a room:  though these have in nature nothing to do one with another, yet when the idea of the place occurs to his mind, it brings (the impression being once made) that of the pain and displeasure with it:  he confounds them in his mind, and can as little bear the one as the other.

13.  Why Time cures some Disorders in the Mind, which Reason cannot cure.

When this combination is settled, and while it lasts, it is not in the power of reason to help us, and relieve us from the effects of it.  Ideas in our minds, when they are there, will operate according to their natures and circumstances.  And here we see the cause why time cures certain affections, which reason, though in the right, and allowed to be so, has not power over, nor is able against them to prevail with those who are apt to hearken to it in other cases.  The death of a child that was the daily delight of its mother’s eyes, and joy of her soul, rends from her heart the whole comfort of her life, and gives her all the torment imaginable:  use the consolations of reason in this case, and you were as good preach ease to one on the rack, and hope to allay, by rational discourses, the pain of his joints tearing asunder.  Till time has by disuse separated the sense of that enjoyment and its loss, from the idea of the child returning to her memory, all representations, though ever so reasonable, are in vain; and therefore some in whom the union between these ideas is never dissolved, spend their lives in mourning, and carry an incurable sorrow to their graves.