Every object has its own essential facets by which it may be known. It is the essential form of the learner's mind that it can select out and lay hold of the essential form of the objects presented to it. The watch a student wears to school may have many vanities, but if it is a watch it has the essentials to measure time. When the form of the mind operates on the form of the object, it knows the object. A report from the senses of the apprehension of some object.
Memory holds the image of the object in mind together with other similar objects.
The active intellect can distinguish between the accidental and the essential qualities of the object. The essence of the watch is presented to the cognitive intellect which conceptualizes this essence in terms of what is common to all these objects of the same nature. The learner goes on to an understanding of the relation of one known thing to another. Evaluation of the Correspondence Theory on ways of knowing The learner is not empty handed as he or she comes to the process of learning. The learner possesses certain potentialities for knowledge beyond sense data.