There is another and a very different answer to the question regarding the logical function of mental imagery. To distinguish this answer from that of the associationist or empiricist, I will call it the answer of the conceptualist. I am not at all positive that this label would stick even to those to whom it might be applied with considerable justification. The terms "rationalistic" and "transcendental" might be preferred in opposition to the term "empirical." And we have the term "apperceptionist" in opposition to the term "associationist." If the term "conceptualist" is admissible, it should be brought down to date, perhaps, by making it "neo-conceptualist." The present difficulties regarding terminology would be eased considerably if we only had a convenient set of derivatives made from the word "meaning." Since we have not, I will use derivatives made from the word "concept" to denote views opposite to those held by the empirical school. The conceptualist could be depended upon to answer our question in the negative. Logical functions begin where the image leaves off. They begin with the _idea_, with meaning. The conceptualist distinguishes sharply between the image as a psychical existence and the idea, or concept, as logical meaning. On the one hand, you have the "image," not only as a mere psychical existence, but a mocking existence at that, fleeting, inconstant, shifting, never perhaps twice alike; yet, mind you, an _existence_, a _fact_--that must be admitted. On the other hand, you have the "idea," with "a fixed content or logical meaning,"[80] which is referred by an act of judgment to a reality beyond the act.[81] The "idea," the logical meaning, begins where the "image" leaves off. Does this mean that the "idea" is wholly independent of the "image"? Yes and no. The "idea" is independent of that which is ordinarily regarded as the special characteristic of an "image," namely, its quality, its sense-content. That is to say, the "idea" is independent of any particular "image," any special embodiment of sense-content. Any image will do. As Mr. Bosanquet remarks in comparing the psychical images that pass through our minds to a store of signal flags: Not only is it indifferent whether your signal flag of today is the same bit of cloth that you hoisted yesterday, but also, no one knows or cares whether it is clean or dirty, thick or thin, frayed or smooth, as long as it is distinctly legible as an element of the signal code. Part of its content, of its attributes and relations, is a fixed index which carries a distinct reference; all the rest is nothing to us, and, except in a moment of idle curiosity, we are unaware that it exists.[82]