54 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
unfurl its activity when a point of departure is found. Ex-
perience soon teaches that itisfound. Thinking is able to
draw threads from one element of observation to another.
It joins specific concepts to these elements and thus
brings them into a relationship with each other. We have
already seen how a noise we encounter is linked with an-
other observation, in that we characterize the former as
the effect of the latter.
If we recall that the activity of thinking should never be
considered subjective, we will not be tempted to believe
that such relationships, which are established by thinking,
have merely a subjective validity.
It now becomes a question of discovering, through
thinking contemplation, how the immediately given con-
tent of observation—the pure, relationless aggregate of
sensory objects —relates to our conscious subject.
Because of shifting habits of speech, it seems necessary
for me to come to an agreement with my reader on the use
of a word that I must employ from now on. The word is
percept. I will use the word “percept” to refer to “the im-
mediate objects of sensation” mentioned above, insofar
as the conscious subject knows these objects through ob-
servation. Thus, it is not the process of observation but
theobject of observation that I designate with this name.
I have not chosen to use the term sensation, because
sensation has a specific meaning in physiology that is nar-
rower than that of my concept of the percept. I can easily
characterize a feeling within myself as a percept, but not
as a sensation in the physiological sense. By its becoming
percept for me, I gain knowledge even of my feeling. And
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