It is the interest of the imagination to change objects according to its caprice; the interest of the understanding is to unite its representations with strict logical necessity. To satisfy the imagination, a discourse must have a material part, a _body_; and these are formed by the perceptions, from which the understanding separates distinct features or conceptions. For though we may attempt to obtain the highest pitch of abstraction, something sensuous always lies at the ground of the thought. But imagination strives to pass unfettered and lawless from one conception to another conception, and seeks not to be bound by any other connection than that of time. So when the perceptions that constitute the bodily part of a discourse have no concatenation as things, when they appear rather to stand apart as independent limbs and separate unities, when they betray the utter disorder of a sportive imagination, obedient to itself alone, then the clothing has æsthetic freedom and the wants of the fancy are satisfied. A mode of presentation such as this might be styled an _organic_ product, in which not only the whole lives, but also each part has its individual life. A merely scientific presentation is a _mechanical_ work, when the parts, lifeless in themselves, impart by their connection an artificial life to the whole. On the other hand, a discourse, in order to satisfy the understanding and to produce knowledge, must have a spiritual part, it must have _significance_, and it receives this through the conceptions, by means of which those perceptions are referred to one another and united into a whole. The problem of satisfying the understanding by conformity with law, while the imagination is flattered by being set free from restrictions, is solved thus: by obtaining the closest connection between the conceptions forming the spiritual part of the discourse, while the perceptions, corresponding to them and forming the sensuous part of the discourse, appear to cohere merely through an arbitrary play of the fancy.