 As was noted above  (§2.1),  Mill’s naturalism involves the claim that human beings and their minds are wholly a part of nature. As such, they are subject to causal laws in just the same manner as the rest of natural world—empirical study of the mind, Mill holds, reveals that it is governed by the laws of associationistic psychology. Mill’s associationism differs in key respects from that of his predecessors—he shows more concern to do justice to the spontaneity of mind (Bain’s Psychology, XI: 335), the world-directed nature of representational thought (Notes on the Analysis, XXXI: 413), and the fact that some complex ideas cannot be accounted for in terms of the mechanical combination of simple ideas present in sense experience (System, VIII: 852–6). Such modifications of his associationistic inheritance were, in part, a reaction to points made by the Germano-Coleridgean school. His account, nevertheless, remains firmly within the tradition of British empiricism—and he never wavers from a commitment to the claim that our mental life is governed by causal laws operating in a deterministic fashion. Indeed, Mill holds out hope that our understanding of such laws will improve—and even shows interest in the promise of understanding the “material conditions” of thought in the brain and nervous system (Bain’s Psychology, XI: 348).