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ASSMANNSHAUSEN 
ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 511 
  
  
  
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every year on circuits all round the kingdom to 
make inquiry into crimes committed in certain 
counties, and to hear and determine the same 
gecording to law, (;1{‘t0 try certain civil and.cnnnn&l 
cases which are ready for trial ; and occasionally a 
third circuit is appointed in the course of the year, 
for the purposs of _].a,ll dch}f STy '};ho circuits 
(formeriy eight) are, since l??;), seven in number— 
Northern, North-eastern, _Mldland, South-eastern, 
Oxford, Western, and North and South Wales; and 
in going them, the judges or commissioners sit by 
yirtue of four several authorities : (1) The commis- 
sion of the peace, which is much the same as No. 
2; (2) A commission of oyer and ferminer, which 
applies to cases ‘wl_lere the indictment is ‘found 
pefore the commissioners; (3) A commission of 
general jail delivery, which enables them to try all 
persons in prison or on bail. = The other authority 
is (4) that of nisi preus, which empowers them to 
try all questions of fact issuing out of the courts at 
Westminster that are then ripe for trial by jury. 
These, by the ancient course of the courts, were 
usually appointed to be tried at Westminster in 
some Easter or Michaelmas term, by a jury returned 
from the county wherein the cause of action arose ; 
but with this proviso, nisé prius, unless before the 
day fixed the judges should come into the county in 
question, which in modern times they have invari- 
ably done in the vacations preceding; so that the 
trial has always, in fact, taken place before these 
judges. And now the trial is allowed to take place 
without the use of any such words in the process of 
  
  
  
judges sent under commission into the several 
counties. The circuit system, however, does not 
extend to London and Middlesex, which have 
instead courts of nisi prius, which are held before 
the chief or other judge of the superior courts for 
the trial of civil causes, at what are called the 
London and Westminster Sittings; and the estab- 
lishment of the Central Criminal Court has suffi- 
ciently provided for the administration of criminal 
justice within these districts. 
The circuit courts of Justiciary in Scotland very 
much resemble the assizes in England, and have, 
in criminal matters, very much the same juris- 
diction ; but in civil causes their authority is prac- 
tically limited to the hearing of appeals from the 
Small Debt Courts, although civil trials by jury in 
the Court of Session are occasionally set down for 
circuit. Scotland is divided into three circuits, the 
North, South, and West. Formerly there were 
only two courts held in the year, with an additional 
court at Glasgow. In 1882 it was found necessary, 
by Act of Adjournal following on Order of Privy- 
council, to provide for three additional courts m 
Glasgow, and two additional at Perth, Dundee, and 
Aberdeen. 
In the sense of an ordinance or law, the term 
assize has various applications, although chiefly in 
the more ancient systems of jurisprudence. Thus, 
the ‘ Assizes’ of Jerusalem were a code of feudal 
laws for the kingdom of Jerusalem, formed in 1099 
by an assembly of the Latin barons and of the 
clergy and laity under Godfrey of Bouillon. Then 
there were in England the Assize of Bread, the 
Assize of the Forest, the Assize of Clarendon. The 
word was often applied to particular action con- 
nected with land. In the ecriminal procedure of 
Seotland, the word assize was until recently the 
only technical term for the jury, and is still used in 
that sense. See JURY TRIAL. 
Assmannshau'sen, a village on the Rhine, 3 
miles below Riidesheim, famous for the red and 
White wine which is produced on the slate-moun- 
tains in its vicinity. The red wine resembles Bur- 
gundy, and possesses a rare aromatic flavour. The 
choicest sort, which is preferred by connoisseurs to 
e ——— 
   
  
et 
the court, and as a matter of course, before the | 
  
  
  
| 
all the other red wines of the Rhine, is cultivabed 
in the ducal vineyards at Wiesbaden. 
Associate Synod, ASSOCIATE PRESBYTERY, 
designations formerly adopted among certain dis- 
senters from the Church of Scotland. See UNITED 
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 
Association. See CO-OPERATION ; also, 
SOCIETIES, LEAGUE, COMPANY. 
Association of Edeas. This isa phrase of 
great importance in the Philosophy of the Human 
Mind, as expressing, according to an important 
school of modern thinkers, the most pervading fact 
at the foundation of our intelligence. What is 
meant by Association of Ideas, may be thus 
illustrated : When we see the sky becoming 
overcast, we think of rain as about to follow, 
the notion of rain not having previously been 
present to our mind. When we hear the church- 
bells, we are apt to think of the crowds in the 
street, or of some of the other circumstances 
of public worship. ~When we pass a house, 
we are reminded of its occupier; and meeting a 
person we know, we may be carried in thought to 
his office, and from that to other persons holding 
the same office, and so on. If an object is before 
our eyes, as a mountain, we are said to receive an 
impression or sensation of it, in consequence of the 
actual presence of the thing; but it is possible for 
us to remember the mountain, or to have an idea 
of it, when far away from the reality, in which case 
there must be some power in the mind itself, 
different from the susceptibility to present objects, 
a power of retaining, reviving, or resuscitating those 
states at first induced by contact with the actual. 
Besides the sights, and sounds, and touches caused 
by contact with real things, we are greatly occupied 
with sights, sounds, and touches remembered, 
' anticipated, or imagined, which is to live in a world 
of ideas; and it is in this world that the process 
termed Association has its sphere. The associa- 
tion between names and things comprehends one 
of the most extensive applications of the power in 
question. 
The circumstances under which one idea brings 
forward another into the view are principally these 
two—viz. first, previous proximity; and second, 
likeness. 'The terms ¢ Contiguity’ and ¢ Similarity’ 
may be used to express them. The first is exem- 
plified in the cases of association given above ; for 
in most of those it will be found that the conjoined 
notions have been frequently in the view at the 
same time, in consequence of which they have, as 
it were, grown together, or become part of the same 
whole. Thus, we have often noticed the darkened 
sky followed by a shower; the two facts have 
occupied the attention simultaneously, and in 
virtue of some power belonging to our mental 
framework, they have cohered into an inseparable 
| couple or aggregate in the mind. This is proximity, 
or contiguity. When one idea suggests another 
which was never in company with it before, it is 
generally through the force of some likeness between 
the two. We meet an old man in the street with a 
very peculiar face, which reminds us of the bust 
of Socrates. These two things had never accom- 
panied one another in our mind before, and there- 
fore it could not be the force of proximity that 
made the second to arise at the instigation of the 
first ; but there was a certain amount of likeness 
between the old man's features and those of 
Socrates.  Identification and comparison both 
imply that things are brought together by virtue 
of their similarity. The principle of proximity 
operates most in Memory, Habit, and Routine 
similarity has to do with invention and original- 
ity, and is essential to the processes of Reason 
and Imagination.