han the object image. It saves energy
and time. It brings with it less of irrelevant detail and is more stable
than the object image, and therefore results in more accurate thinking.
It is abstract in nature and therefore has more general application. On
the other hand, it has been claimed for the object image that it
necessarily precedes the verbal image--is fundamental to it; that it is
essential in creative work dealing with materials and sounds and in the
appreciation of certain types of descriptive literature, and that in any
part of the thinking process when, because of difficulty of some kind, a
percept would help, an object image would be of the same assistance. It
is concerning these supposed advantages of the object image that there
has been most dispute. There is no proof that the line of growth is
necessarily from percept, through object image, to verbal image. In
certain fields, notably smell, the object image is almost absent and yet
the verbal images in that field carry meaning. It is also true that
people whose power of getting clear-cut, vivid object images is almost
nil seem to be in nowise hampered by that fact in their use of the
symbols. Knowing the unreliability of the object image, it would seem
very unsafe to use it as the link between percept and symbol. Much
better to connect the symbol directly with the experience and let it
gain its meaning from that. As to its value in constructive work in
arts, literature, drama, and invention, the testimony of some experts in
each field bears witness that it is not a necessary accompaniment of
success. The musician need not hear, mentally, all the harmonies,
changes, intervals; he may think them in terms of notes, rests, etc., as
he composes. The poet need not see the scene he is describing; verbal
images may bear his meanings. Of course this does not mean that object
images may not be present too, but the point is that the worker is not
dependent on them. The aid offered by object images in time of
difficulty is still more open to doubt. As an illustration of what is
meant by this: Suppose a child to be given a carpeting example in
arithmetic which he finds himself unable to solve. The claim is made
that if he will then call up a concrete image of the room, he will see
that the carpet is laid in strips and that suggestion may set him right.
But it has been proved experimentally over and over again that if he
doesn't know that carpets are laid that way, he w