the test of the truth must at the same time be contained in
the manner of its presentation. But this can mean nothing else than that
not only the contents, but also the mode of stating them, must be
according to the laws of thought. They must be connected in the
presentation with the same strict logical sequence with which they are
chained together in the seasonings of the understanding; the stability of
the representation must guarantee that of the ideas. But the strict
necessity with which the understanding links together reasonings and
conclusions, is quite antagonistic to the freedom granted to imagination
in matters of knowledge. By its very nature, the imagination strives
after perceptions, that is, after complete and completely determinate
representations, and is indefatigably active to represent the universal
in one single case, to limit it in time and space, to make of every
conception an individual, and to give a body to abstractions. Moreover,
the imagination likes freedom in its combinations, and admits no other
law in them than the accidental connection with time and space; for this
is the only connection that remains to our representations, if we
separate from them in thought all that is conception, all that binds them
internally and substantially together. The understanding, following a
diametrically opposite course, only occupies itself with part
representations or conceptions, and its effort is directed to distinguish
features in the living unity of a perception. The understanding proceeds
on the same principles in putting together and taking to pieces, but it
can only combine things by part-representations, just as it can separate
them; for it only unites, according to their inner relations, things that
first disclosed themselves in their separation.

The understanding observes a strict necessity and conformity with laws in
its combinations, and it is only the consistent connection of ideas that
satisfies it. But this connection is destroyed as often as the
imagination insinuates entire representations (individual cases) in this
chain of abstractions, and mixes up the accidents of time with the strict
necessity of a chain of circumstances. Accordingly, in every case where
it is essential to carry out a rigidly accurate sequence of reasoning,
imagination must forego its capricious character; and its endeavor to
obtain all possible sensuousness in conceptions, and all freedom in their
combination, must b