In his _De cognitione, veritate et ideis_ (1684), after dividing _cognitio_ into _obscura vel clara,_ the _clara_ into _confusa vel distincta,_ and the _distincta_ into _adaequata vel inadaequata,_ Leibniz remarks that while painters and other artists are able to judge works of art very fairly they can give no reason for their decisions, and if questioned as to the reason of their condemnation of any work of art, they reply it lacks a _je ne sais quoi_: ("_at iudicii sui rationem reddere saepe non posse, et quaerenti dicere, se in re, quae displicet, desiderare nescio quid_").[11] They do possess, in fact, clear cognition, but confused and not distinct; what we should call to-day imaginative, not _ratiocinative,_ consciousness: and indeed the latter does not exist in the case of art. There are things impossible to define: "_on ne les fait connaître que par des exemples, et, au reste, il faut dire que c'est un je ne sais quoi, jusqu'à ce qu'on en déchiffre la contexture_."[12] But these _perceptions confuses ou sentiments_ have "_plus grande efficacité que l'on ne pense: ce sont elles qui forment ce je ne sais quoi, ces goûts, ces images des qualités des sens._"[13] Whence it appears plainly that in his discussion of these perceptions Leibniz reposes upon the æsthetic theories we discussed in the preceding chapter; indeed at one point[14] he mentions Bouhours' book. [Sidenote: _Intellectualism of Leibniz_] It might seem that by according _claritas_ and denying _distinctio_ to æsthetic facts Leibniz recognized that their peculiar character is neither sensuous nor intellectual. He might seem to have distinguished them by their "_claritas_" from pleasure or sense-motions, and from intellect by their lack of "_distinctio._" But the "_lex continui_" and the Leibnitian intellectualism forbid this interpretation. In this case obscurity and clarity are quantitative degrees of one single consciousness, distinct or intellectual, towards which both converge and with which in the extreme case they unite.