You can mark in desire the rising of the tide, as the appetite more and more invades the personality, appealing, as it does, not merely to the sensory side of the self, but to its ideal components as well.- Samuel Alexander
When we come to images or memories or thoughts, speculation, while always closely related to practice, is more explicit, and it is in fact not immediately obvious that such processes can be described in any sense as practical.
What is the meaning of the togetherness of the perceiving mind, in that peculiar modification of perceiving which makes it perceive not a star but a tree, and the tree itself, is a problem for philosophy.
We cannot therefore say that mental acts contain a cognitive as well as a conative element.
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.
The thing of which the act of perception is the perception is experienced as something not mental.
The sensory acts are accordingly distinguished by their objects.
The perceptive act is a reaction of the mind upon the object of which it is the perception.
The mental act of sensation which issues in reflex movement is so simple as to defy analysis.
The interval between a cold expectation and a warm desire may be filled by expectations of varying degrees of warmth or by desires of varying degrees of coldness.
Such being the nature of mental life, the business of psychology is primarily to describe in detail the various forms which attention or conation assumes upon the different levels of that life.
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Psychology is the science of the act of experiencing, and deals with the whole system of such acts as they make up mental life.
Mental life is indeed practical through and through. It begins in practice and it ends in practice.
It may be added, to prevent misunderstanding, that when I speak of contemplated objects in this last phrase as objects of contemplation, the act of contemplation itself is of course an enjoyment.
It is more difficult to designate this form of conation on its practical side by a satisfactory name.
