We cannot either leave out the fact that the meaningless syllables are bracketed all together, so to speak, by a certain _situation_, namely, the situation created by the experiment. The observer comes to them, in accordance with this situation, intending to learn them, to memorise them: a fact of very great importance!—and a fact that needs to be dwelt on for a little, if we are to see our way clearly in what follows. We said on p. 149 that _meanings_ are associated. Yet we have been studying the formation of associative tendencies in the brain, the associating organ, by the help of—meaningless syllables! Is there not a flat contradiction here between theory and practice? No, that is really not the case; and the key to the riddle lies in this fact of the ‘situation’ which we are now discussing. The syllables are meaningless _as_ syllables; they are thus set apart from ordinary syllables that are meaningful; and it is this difference from _words_, combined with their likeness to words in other respects, that makes them useful to the experimenter (p. 151). For since they are themselves meaningless, we can put upon them a constant meaning of our own; we can introduce them into any situation of our own making; and the meaning that we give them, in the study of the associative tendencies, is the meaning of ‘an experimental series to be learned under certain instructions’: a meaning which is definite, and which remains the same throughout the experiments. You see, then, that the ‘situation’ is important. Attention, as we know, means reinforcement of certain nervous processes and inhibition of others (p. 107); and the intention to learn implies the activity of directive nerve-forces (p. 96), the existence of a special set or disposition of the brain. Let us keep these things in mind; and let us call the brain-processes that are correlated with mental processes ‘psychoneural’ processes. Then we may say: _When a number of psychoneural processes, all of which are reinforced and all of which stand alike under the directive influence of a nervous disposition, occur together under certain favourable conditions, then_ =associative tendencies= _are established among them, such that the recurrence of any one tends to involve, according to circumstances, the recurrence of the others_. The phrase ‘under favourable conditions’ refers to the effect of repetition of the series, of their distribution in time, and so forth; and the phrase ‘according to circumstances’ means that heed must be paid to the lapse of time since learning, to the working of initial or terminal inhibition, and so forth. So much for a generalised law of associative tendency, derived from the work with meaningless syllables! That is _a law of nervous action_; now let us turn to =psychology=, and see if we can formulate a law of mental connection. We shall be dealing with perceptions and ideas; and we shall be dealing with them as experiences, made up of core and context (p. 117).