h has frequently
occurred at about the same time as the word, and now, through habit,
causes the word. It follows that the law of habit is adequate to account
for the use of words in the absence of their objects; moreover, it would
be adequate even without introducing images. Although, therefore, images
seem undeniable, we cannot derive an additional argument in their favour
from the use of words, which could, theoretically, be explained without
introducing images.

*For a more exact statement of this law, with the
limitations suggested by experiment, see A. Wohlgemuth, "On
Memory and the Direction of Associations," "British Journal
of Psychology," vol. v, part iv (March, 1913).

When we understand a word, there is a reciprocal association between
it and the images of what it "means." Images may cause us to use words
which mean them, and these words, heard or read, may in turn cause the
appropriate images. Thus speech is a means of producing in our hearers
the images which are in us. Also, by a telescoped process, words come in
time to produce directly the effects which would have been produced
by the images with which they were associated. The general law of
telescoped processes is that, if A causes B and B causes C, it will
happen in time that A will cause C directly, without the intermediary
of B. This is a characteristic of psychological and neural causation.
In virtue of this law, the effects of images upon our actions come to
be produced by words, even when the words do not call up appropriate
images. The more familiar we are with words, the more our "thinking"
goes on in words instead of images. We may, for example, be able to
describe a person's appearance correctly without having at any time had
any image of him, provided, when we saw him, we thought of words which
fitted him; the words alone may remain with us as a habit, and enable
us to speak as if we could recall a visual image of the man. In this and
other ways the understanding of a word often comes to be quite free from
imagery; but in first learning the use of language it would seem that
imagery always plays a very important part.

Images as well as words may be said to have "meaning"; indeed, the
meaning of images seems more primitive than the meaning of words. What
we call (say) an image of St. Paul's may be said to "mean" St. Paul's.
But it is not at all easy to say exactly what constitutes the meaning of
an image. A memory-ima