tact and contact

"The "thinking thing" of modernity conceals a past still to be uncovered, in which the relations between cogitation and perception, thought and feeling, were not what they became, and in which sensation, the primary power of the tactile being, held the keys to the life of all beasts, no less the two-legged one who would raise himself above those around him." (p. 40-41 The Inner Touch, Daniel Heller-Roazen)