For psychological purposes the most important differences in conation are those in virtue of which the object is revealed as sensed or perceived or imaged or remembered or thought.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.
Within this widest concept of object, and specifically within the concept of individual object, Objects and phenomena stand in contrast with each other.
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.
There has been a great gulf in psychological thought between the perception of space and objects on one hand and the perception of meaning on the other.
In contemplation and reverie, one thought introduces another perpetually; and it is by similarity, or the hooking of one upon the other, that the process of thinking is carried on.
In all the sciences except Psychology we deal with objects and their changes, and leave out of account as far as possible the mind which observes them.
Sensorial perception, for example, certainly occurs with greater or less accuracy according to the degree of interest; it is constantly given other directions by the change of external stimuli and by ideas.
When we make the cerebral state the beginning of an action, and in no sense the condition of a perception, we place the perceived images of things outside the image of our body, and thus replace perception within the things themselves.
The conscious mind determines the actions, the unconscious mind determines the reactions; and the reactions are just as important as the actions.
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.