Human Individuality 101lost, because the concepts that ought to be brought into re-
lationship with them are lacking. A person whose capac-
ity to think is well developed but who perceives poorly
because of coarse sensory equipment will be equally in-
capable of gathering experience. Such persons might ac-
quire concepts somehow, but their intuitions will lack a
vivid relationship to specific things. A thoughtless travel-
er and a scholar living in abstract conceptual systems are
equally unable to have rich experience.
Reality reveals itself to us as percepts and concepts; the
subjective representation of that reality reveals itself as
mental pictures.
If our personality manifested only cognitively, the sum
of everything objective would be given in percepts, con-
cepts, and mental pictures.
Yet we are not satisfied with relating a percept to a con-
cept by means of thinking. We also relate it to our partic-
ular subjectivity, to our individualI. The expression of
this individual relation is feeling, which manifests as
pleasure or displeasure.
Thinking andfeeling correspond to the dual nature of our
being, on which we have already reflected.Thinking is the
element through which we participate in the universal pro-
cess of the cosmos;feeling is the element through which
we can withdraw into the confines of our own being.
Our thinking unites us with the world; our feeling leads
us back into ourselves and makes us individuals. If we
were only thinking and perceiving beings, then our whole
life would flow past in monotonous indifference. If we
could onlyknow ourselves as selves, then we would be