The World as Percept 55because we gain knowledge of our thinking, too, through
observation, we can even call thinking, as it first appears
to our consciousness, a percept.
The naive person considers percepts, as they first ap-
pear, to be things that have an existence quite independent
of the human being in question. If we see a tree, we ini-
tially believe that the tree, in the form that we see it, with
its various colors, etc., is standing there in the spot to
which our gaze is directed. From this naive standpoint, if
we see the sun appear in the morning as a disc on the ho-
rizon and then follow the progress of this disc, we believe
that all of this exists and occurs just as we observe it. We
cling fast to this belief until we meet other percepts that
contradict the first. The child, with no experience of dis-
tances, reaches for the moon, and only when a second per-
cept comes to contradict the first can the child correct
what at first seemed real to it. Every extension in the
sphere of my percepts makes me correct my image of the
world. This is evident in daily life, just as it is in the spir-
itual evolution of humankind. The ancient image of the
relation of the earth to the sun and the other heavenly
bodies had to be replaced by that of Copernicus, because
the ancient image did not agree with new, previously un-
known percepts. When Dr. Franz operated on someone
born blind, the latter said that before his operation he had
arrived through the sense of touch at a very different im-
age of the size of objects. He had to correct his tactile
percepts with his visual percepts.^2
- Johann Christoph August Franz, (born 1807), eye surgeon.