I am a 'visualiser,' and the picture in my case was a blurred triangular outline.

Other 'visualisers' have described to me the picture of a red flag, or of a green field (seen from a railway carriage), as automatically called up by the word England.

After the automatic picture or sound image and its purely automatic emotional accompaniment comes the 'meaning' of the word, the things one knows about England, which are presented to the memory by a process semi-automatic at first, but requiring before it is exhausted a severe effort.

The question as to what images and feelings shall appear at each stage is, of course, settled by all the thoughts and events of our past life, but they appear, in the earlier moments at least of the experiment, before we have time consciously to reflect or choose.
A corresponding process may be set up by other symbols besides language.
If in the experiment the hats belonging to members of a family be substituted for the written cards, the rest of the process will go on--the automatic 'image,' automatically accompanied by emotional association, being succeeded in the course of a second or so by the voluntary realisation of 'meaning,' and finally by a deliberate effort of recollection and thought.

Tennyson, partly because he was a born poet and partly perhaps because his excessive use of tobacco put his brain occasionally a little out of focus, was extraordinarily accurate in his account of those separate mental states which for most men are merged into one by memory.