ABSTRACT
Epistemological psychology has elaborated and refined its distinctions between the various forms and grades of cognition. Higher, much higher, in the scale of evolution some affectively prominent cognition, sign, or sensation, or a small group of such, serves as a symbol for the whole group of experiences: the scent of the quarry is followed, the roar of the enemy is feared. The fixed symbol has rendered possible the evolution of abstraction, has forced its development in a geometrical progression which has transformed cognition from the amoeba’s sensation into the discursive reason of the philosopher. All cognition, all thought, develops primitively in view, and by virtue of its immediate utilitarian functions alone. The notion that there can be entirely different things, separate ‘substances,’ is a fantasy the absurdity of which contradicts the very fact of cognition. The function of cognition is to inhibit the operation of incognizant appetence.
