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directed to some external object or action, but in 

 studying psychology we have to direct our attention 

 inwards upon our own thoughts and feelings, and upon 

 the actions of our own mind. Feelings and thoughts 

 can, of course, be directly known only by the being who 

 has them, and who knows that he possesses them, for 

 without such knowledge he could not intentionally and 

 deliberately examine them. 



Now, on turning our mind inwards, we can, to begin 

 with, recognise two very distinct kinds of mental 

 activity. Let us suppose we are walking through a 

 wood, while thinking about the study of nature. We 

 may then recognise that a series of thoughts, of which 

 we are conscious, has been passing (as the phrase goes) 

 through our mind, whil?, at the same time, our feet 

 must have received a series of sense-impressions from 

 the ground walked over, to which sense-impressions we 

 paid no attention at all, though, when we advert to them, 

 we can recognise them as having existed. These two 

 orders of mental activity, (i) sensations and (2) thoughts, 

 are types of two distinct classes of mental activities two 

 faculties which we possess ; the lower of these is our sensi- 

 tive activity (a faculty which we share with other animals), 

 the higher is our intellectual faculty, which, as far as we 

 have been able to ascertain, is one possessed by no other 

 animal whatever. This is probably the most fundamental 

 and important of all the distinctions to be made in the 

 study of the mind ; for without it no accurate and satis- 

 factory knowledge is possible of what the mind of man 

 really is. 



Now, in the first place, we have the power of recog- 

 nising the existence of whatever we perceive to exist 

 to recognise that it really exists, to recognise its being. 

 This idea, the idea of " being," is an idea which we must 



