The mental act of sensation which issues in reflex movement is so simple as to defy analysis.

Thus the same object may supply a practical perception to one person and a speculative one to another, or the same person may perceive it partly practically and partly speculatively.

But though cognition is not an element of mental action, nor even in any real sense of the word an aspect of it, the distinction of cognition and conation has if properly defined a definite value.

We cannot therefore say that mental acts contain a cognitive as well as a conative element.

It is more difficult to designate this form of conation on its practical side by a satisfactory name.

An object is not first imagined or thought about and then expected or willed, but in being actively expected it is imagined as future and in being willed it is thought.

Psychology is the science of the act of experiencing, and deals with the whole system of such acts as they make up mental life.