COGERS HALL, a London tavern debating society. It was instituted in 1755 at the White Bear Inn (now St Bride’s Tavern), Fleet Street, moved about 1850 to Discussion Hall, Shoe Lane, and in 1871 finally migrated to the Barley Mow Inn, Salisbury Square, E.C., its present quarters. The name is often wrongly spelt Codgers and Coggers; the “o” is really long, the accepted derivation being from Descartes’ Cogito, ergo sum, and thus meaning “The society of thinkers.” The aims of the Cogers were “the promotion of the liberty of the subject and the freedom of the Press, the maintenance of loyalty to the laws, the rights and claims of humanity and the practice of public and private virtue.” Among its early members Cogers Hall reckoned John Wilkes, one of its first presidents, and Curran, who in 1773 writes to a friend that he spent a couple of hours every night at the Hall. Later Dickens was a prominent member.
See Peter Rayleigh, History of Ye Antient Society of Cogers (London, 1904).
COGHLAN, CHARLES FRANCIS (1841-1899), Irish actor, was born in Paris, and was educated for the law. He made his first London appearance in 1860, and became the leading actor at the Prince of Wales’s. He went to America in 1876, where he remained for the rest of his life, playing first in Augustin Daly’s company and then in the Union Square stock company, during the long run of The Celebrated Case. He also played with his sister, and in support of Mrs Langtry and Mrs Fiske, and in 1898 produced a version of Dumas’ Kean, called The Royal Box, in which he successfully starred during the last years of his life. He died in Galveston, Texas, on the 27th of November 1899.
His sister, the actress Rose Coghlan (1853- ), went to America in 1871, was again in England from 1873 to 1877, playing with Barry Sullivan, and then returned to America, where she became prominent as Countess Zicka in Diplomacy, and Stephanie in Forget-me-not. She was at Wallack’s almost continuously until 1888, and subsequently appeared in melodrama in parts like the title-rôle of The Sporting Duchess.
COGNAC, a town of south-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Charente, on the left bank of the river Charente, 32 m. W. of Angoulême on the Ouest-État railway, between Angoulême and Saintes. Pop. (1906) 18,389. The streets of the old town—which borders the river—are narrow and tortuous, but the newer parts are well provided with open spaces. The chief of these is the beautiful Parc François 1er overlooking the Charente. In one of the squares there is a statue of Francis I., who was born here. The chief building is a church of the 12th century dedicated to St Leger, which preserves a fine Romanesque façade and a tower of the 15th century. A castle of the 15th and 16th centuries, once the residence of the counts of Angoulême, now a storehouse for brandy, and a medieval gate stand in the older part of the town. Cognac is the seat of a subprefect and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a council of trade arbitrators, a chamber of commerce, and consulates of the United States, Spain and Portugal. Its most important industry is the distillation of the brandy (q.v.) to which the town gives its name. Large quantities are carried, by way of the river, to the neighbouring port of Tonnay-Charente. The industries subsidiary to the brandy trade, such as the making of cases and bottles, occupy many hands. Ironware is also manufactured, and a considerable trade is maintained in grain and cattle. In 1526 Cognac gave its name to a treaty concluded against Charles V. by Francis I., the pope, Venice and Milan. Its possession was contested during the wars of religion, and in 1570 it became one of the Huguenot strongholds. In 1651 it successfully sustained a siege against Louis II., prince of Condé, leader of the Fronde.
See Le Pays du Cognac, by L. Ravaz, for a description of the district and its viticulture.
COGNITION (Latin cognitio, from cognoscere, to become acquainted with), in psychology, a term used in its most general sense for all modes of being conscious or aware of an object, whether material or intellectual. It is an ultimate mode of consciousness, strictly the presentation (through sensation or otherwise) of an object to consciousness; in its complete form, however, it seems to involve a judgment, i.e. the separation from other objects of the object presented. The psychological theory of cognition takes for granted the dualism of the mind that knows and the object known; it takes no account of the metaphysical problem as to the possibility of a relation between the ego and the non-ego, but assumes that such a relation does exist. Cognition is therefore distinct from emotion and conation; it has no psychological connexion with feelings of pleasure and pain, nor does it tend as such to issue in action.