88 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
the perceptual stage appears to have anything to do with
any another. In the world of percepts considered by itself,
the world is a multiplicity of uniform objects. None plays
a greater role than any other in the hurlyburly of the
world. If we are to have the insight that this or that fact
has greater significance than another, then we must con-
sult our thinking. Without the function of thinking, a ru-
dimentary organ that is without significance for an
animal’s life appears equal in value with the most impor-
tant limb of its body. The separate facts emerge in all their
significance, both in themselves and for everything else,
only when thinking weaves its threads from entity to en-
tity. This activity of thinking is full of content. It is only
through a very specific, concrete content that I can know
why a snail stands at a lower level of development than a
lion. The mere sight—the percept—gives me no content
that could inform me about any relative perfection in their
organization.
Thinking brings this content to the percept out of the
human being’s world of concepts and ideas. In contrast to
perceptual content, which is given us from without,
thought-content appears within. We shall call the form in
which thought-content first arisesintuition. Intuition is to
thinking asobservation is to perception. Intuition and ob-
servation are the sources of our knowledge. We remain
alienated from an object we have observed in the world as
long as we do not have within us the corresponding intu-
ition, which supplies us with the piece of reality missing
from the percept. Full reality remains closed off to any-
one without the ability to find intuitions corresponding to
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