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.

Mental life is indeed practical through and through. It begins in practice and it ends in practice.

Both expectations and memories are more than mere images founded on previous experience.

The perceptive act is a reaction of the mind upon the object of which it is the perception.

Desire then is the invasion of the whole self by the wish, which, as it invades, sets going more and more of the psychical processes; but at the same time, so long as it remains desire, does not succeed in getting possession of the self.

It is convenient to distinguish the two kinds of experience which have thus been described, the experienc-ing and the experienc-ed, by technical words.

In the perception of a tree we can distinguish the act of experiencing, or perceiving, from the thing experienced, or perceived.