Our progress in genuine knowledge always consists _in part in the discovery of something not understood in what had previously been taken for granted as plain, obvious, matter-of-course, and in part in the use of meanings that are directly grasped without question, as instruments for getting hold of obscure, doubtful, and perplexing meanings_. No object is so familiar, so obvious, so commonplace that it may not unexpectedly present, in a novel situation, some problem, and thus arouse reflection in order to understand it. No object or principle is so strange, peculiar, or remote that it may not be dwelt upon till its meaning becomes familiar--taken in on sight without reflection. We may come to _see_, _perceive_, _recognize_, _grasp_, _seize_, _lay hold of_ principles, laws, abstract truths--_i.e._ to understand their meaning in very immediate fashion. Our intellectual progress consists, as has been said, in a rhythm of direct understanding--technically called _ap_prehension--with indirect, mediated understanding--technically called _com_prehension. § 2. _The Process of Acquiring Meanings_ [Sidenote: Familiarity] The first problem that comes up in connection with direct understanding is how a store of directly apprehensible meanings is built up. How do we learn to view things on sight as significant members of a situation, or as having, as a matter of course, specific meanings? Our chief difficulty in answering this question lies in the thoroughness with which the lesson of familiar things has been learnt. Thought can more easily traverse an unexplored region than it can undo what has been so thoroughly done as to be ingrained in unconscious habit. We apprehend chairs, tables, books, trees, horses, clouds, stars, rain, so promptly and directly that it is hard to realize that as meanings they had once to be acquired,--the meanings are now so much parts of the things themselves. [Sidenote: Confusion is prior to familiarity]