Let us, then, assume, as has been indicated, that the process of acquiring knowledge--that is to say, the process of judgment or attention--is in every case of its occurrence incidental to the attainment of an end. We must make this assumption without attempting formally to justify it--though in the course of our discussion it will be abundantly illustrated. Let us, in accordance with this view, think of the typical judgment-process as proceeding, in the main, as follows: First of all must come a sense of need or deficiency, which may, on occasion, be preceded by a more or less violent and sudden shock to the senses, forcibly turning one's attention to the need of immediate action. By degrees this sense of need will grow more definite and come to express itself in a more or less "clear and distinct" image of an end, toward which end the agent is drawn by desire and to which he looks with much or little of emotion. The emergence of the end into consciousness immediately makes possible and occasions definite analysis of the situation in which the end must be worked out. Salient features of the situation forthwith are noticed--whether useful things or favoring conditions, or, on the other hand, the absence of any such. Thus predicates and then subjects for many subsidiary judgments in the comprehensive judgment-process emerge together in action and interaction upon each other. The predicates, developed out of the general end toward which the agent strives, afford successive points of view for fresh analyses of the situation. The logical subjects thus discovered--_objects_ of attention and knowledge--require, on the other hand, as they are scrutinized and judged, modification and re-examination of the end. The end grows clearer and fuller of detail as the predicates or implied ("constituent") ideas which are developed out of it are distinguished from each other and used in making one's inventory of the objective situation. Conversely, the situation loses its first aspect of confusion and takes on more and more the aspect of an orderly assemblage of objects and conditions, useful, indifferent, and adverse, by means of which the end may in greater or less measure be attained or must, in however greatly modified a form, be defeated. Now, in this development of the judgment-process, it must be observed, the end must be more or less clearly and consistently conceived throughout as an _activity_, if the objective means of action which have been determined in the process are not to be, at the last, separate and unrelated data still requiring co-ordination. If the end has been so conceived, the means will inevitably be known as members of a mechanical _system_, since the predicates by which they have been determined have at every point involved this factor of amenability to co-ordination. The judgment-process, if properly conducted and brought to a conclusion, must issue at the end in the functional unity of a finished plan of