But there is no reason why it should be so, if the faculty is free in its action, and not tied to reproduce hard and persistent forms; it may then produce generalised pictures out of its past experiences quite automatically.  It has no difficulty in reducing images to the 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 immense help in some professions stands to reason, but in ordinary social life the possession of a high visualising power, as of a high verbal memory, may pass quite unobserved.  I have to the last failed in anticipating the character of the answers that my friends would give to my inquiries, judging from my previous knowledge of them; though I am bound to say that, having received their answers, I could usually persuade myself that they were justified by my recollections of their previous sayings and conduct generally.