same scale, owing to our constant practice in watching objects as
they approach or recede, and consequently grow or diminish in
apparent size. It readily shifts images to any desired point of the
field of view, owing to our habit of looking at bodies in motion to
the right or left, upward or downward. It selects images that
present the same aspect, either by a simple act of memory or by a
feat of imagination that forces them into the desired position, and
it has little or no difficulty in reversing them from right to left,
as if seen in a looking-glass. In illustration of these generalised
mental images, let us recur to the boat, and suppose the speaker to
continue as follows:--"The boat was a four-oared racing-boat, it was
passing quickly to the left just in front of me, and the men were
bending forward to take a fresh stroke." Now at this point of the
story the listener ought to have a picture well before his eye. It
ought to have the distinctness of a real four-oar going to the left,
at the moment when many of its details still remained unheeded, such
as the dresses of the men and their individual features. It would be
the generic image of a four-oar formed by the combination into a
single picture of a great many sight memories of those boats.

In the highest minds a descriptive word is sufficient to evoke
crowds of shadowy associations, each striving to manifest itself.
When they differ so much from one another as to be unfitted for
combination into a single idea, there will be a conflict, each being
prevented by the rest from obtaining sole possession of the field of
consciousness. There could, therefore, be no definite imagery so
long as the aggregate of all the pictures that the word suggested of
objects presenting similar aspects, reduced to the same size, and
accurately superposed, resulted in a blur; but a picture would
gradually evolve as qualifications were added to the word, and it
would attain to the distinctness and vividness of a generic image
long before the word had been so restricted as to be individualised.
If the intellect be slow, though correct in its operations, the
associations will be few, and the generalised image based on
insufficient data. If the visualising power be faint, the
generalised image will be indistinct.

I cannot discover any closer relation between high visualising power
and the intellectual faculties than between verbal memory and those
same faculties. That it must afford im