What share the symbolism of speech takes in the process briefly indicated in the last paragraph is the subject of much discussion. Without going so far as to urge that the very beginnings of reflective thought are inexplicable without its aid, it may be accepted as obviously true that words are a great assistance. They may be regarded as intellectual pegs upon which we hang the results of abstraction and generalization. It may be said that we often think in pictures or images, and not in words, but the more abstract and general our thought, the more it is dependent on the symbolic elements. We may say, then, that the higher phases of mental development are characterized by the fact that the situations contain the products of reflective thought, presumably absent in the earlier stages; they are further characterized by a new purpose or end of consciousness, namely, to explain the situations hitherto merely accepted as they are given in presentation or re-presentation; they require deliberate attention to the relationships which hold good among the several elements of successive situations; and they involve, so far as behaviour is concerned, the intentional application of an ideal scheme with the object of rational guidance. We shall follow Dr. Stout in terming this later stage of mental development the _ideational stage_; and in speaking of the simpler situations considered in the preceding section as belonging to the _perceptual stage_. It should be observed that we are not attempting to determine just where, in the scale of organic existence, the line between the perceptual and the ideational stages of mental development is to be drawn. We are certainly very far from asserting that the one does not give rise to the other in the course of an evolution which is orderly and progressive. We are merely contrasting the rational guidance of effective consciousness at its best with the earlier embryonic condition out of which it has arisen by natural genesis. In doing this we have been forced to make some reference to the difficulties of technical nomenclature. And some further reference is necessary lest our point of view be misunderstood.