ABSTRACT
George Herbert Mead's description of the act in terms of significant symbols, an act whose beginning is determined by imagery of its end, places symbols within the act. Mead rejects all mechanical models of sociation. Mead's world, despite all his talk about action, is not a world where address—that is, the forms in which people address each other—determines how people relate to each other. Mead deals very sparingly with the capacity of human beings to take the role of others. Mead argues that the "I" is necessary to account for the expressive forms in society which make possible communication, and that the "Me" cannot exist with an "I". In religious thought and experience, communication reaches its ultimate moment in the address of God in prayer. In Mead's description people enact roles in models of the act taken from play and games, but the forms in which thought emerges are not those of the game, but conversation.
