They constitute the main framework of the building; and we should master them well before we go on to find the various applications which they have in the other departments of the subject.
The greater results of "Introspective" or, as it is very often called, "General" psychology may be summed up in a few leading principles, which sound more or less abstract and difficult, but which will have many concrete illustrations in the subsequent chapters.

The facts of experience, the actual events which we find taking place in our minds, fall naturally into certain great divisions.

These are very easily distinguished from one another.

The first distinction is covered by the popularly recognised difference between "thought and conduct," or "knowledge and life." On the one hand, the mind is looked at as receiving, taking in, learning; and on the other hand, as acting, willing, doing this or that.

Another great distinction contrasts a third mental condition, "feeling," with both of the other two.