A FINAL WORD 287 



ings, requires a new application of words, in a very 

 unusual, and long drawn out combination. In reading 

 a book, for example, the flow of thought is maintained, 

 by a constant succession of sensations of words, first 

 on the retina, and thence transferred, by the afferent 

 nerves, to the optical centers of the cortex, upon which 

 the image, of them is formed. These sensitive images 

 call up, or excite, by the law of association, other simi- 

 lar images; but connected, or fused with these latter 

 images, are all the images of former sensations called 

 experiences, with these same words, by which the mean- 

 ing of them have been derived; such as the touch, and 

 reading of books, the hearing of definitions of teachers, 

 and all the mechanism of school education. The mem- 

 ory images, render the meaning of words and sentences, 

 clear to the reader in proportion to his former expe- 

 riences with the subject, about which he is reading. 



These images of former sensations, by similarity, 

 and contiguity, having fused into a new associative 

 image, heretofore called memory, which being similar 

 to the image immediately produced by the present sen- 

 sation coming from the book, fuses also with that, and 

 the two images form a resulting image, called a per- 

 ception of the ideas of the author. This is the con- 

 tinual psychical process of forming thoughts upon, not 

 only the contents of a book, in reading, but upon any 

 objective thing, capable of producing a sensation upon 

 any peripheral sense organs, and through them, upon 

 the brain. It must be plain, from this explanation, 

 why it is so difficult for the young child to learn to 

 read. The child is lacking in memory, and former 

 experience ; therefore, no image of memory is aroused. 

 Now, if the associative image thus formed upon the 

 matured brain, from past experiences, happens to be 



