The higher organisms possess a much more potent form of consciousness: they
possess the faculty of retaining sensations, which is the faculty of
perception. A “perception” is a group of sensations automatically
retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism, which gives it the
ability to be aware, not of single stimuli, but of entities, of
things. An animal is guided, not merely by immediate sensations, but by
percepts. Its actions are not single, discrete responses to single,
separate stimuli, but are directed by an integrated awareness of the
perceptual reality confronting it. It is able to grasp the perceptual
concretes immediately present and it is able to form automatic perceptual
associations, but it can go no further.