The world of representative thought is a world of independent points in juxtaposition, which we arrange as seems best to us. It lies in an undefinable borderland between us and things. It is a would-be, but not an actual, reality. It is not like a true Idea--the unity of subjective and objective: but only a make-believe. We have put it there, and yet we credit it with an effective existence. When our mind moves amongst these picture-thoughts, it can only institute external relations between the terms. A judgment, in that case, is interpreted to mean the conjunction of two terms, which at once step into the rank of subject and predicate by means of the copula. A sentence is an arrangement of words _ab extra_ in conscious or unconscious conformity with the rules of grammar. The world of knowledge, or the Idea, as a whole is turned into a plane surface with its typical terms,--the members of the organism of reason,--like dots put in co-ordination and juxtaposition, not spontaneously affected towards each other. Even if they are not embodied and reduced to a sensuous level of existence, they are held to be originally separate and unconnected. How they all came into being, and whether they do not all by gradations and differentiation-proceed from one root, are questions neither asked nor answered. The level of representative thinking--thinking i. e. which is not the grasp (_Begriff_) of the reality, but only the apprehension of something which stands for and represents it--is the level on which we all come, more or less, to stand in our non-philosophic moments. It is, in essentials, the realm of what Plato called _δόξα_,--the level of consciousness which fails to rise to see the unity of essence in the many single goods and beauties, which holds its knowledge (such at is) at the mercy of accidents, not bound by the conclusions of reasoning,--the realm which is not without reality, but an immature and uncertain reality. It is, in essentials, the same as what, as opposed to _intellectus_, Spinoza styled _imaginatio._ Imagination, to Spinoza, is an understanding under the bondage of particular passions and temporary interests, which loses sight of the great bond of being or _Substantia_, and fixes its glance on the parts in subordinate and infra-essential relationships: which is always finite, i. e. never really comprehensive and self-sustaining in its view, but always limited by a tacit reference to something outside itself. The 'Representation' is the idea, in the loose and inexact use of that word, which goes with the phrase _mere idea_,--i. e. a mere mental image, which is not the reality, though it is believed to do duty for and to represent it[2]. Yet it is not a mere thought: rather its whole aim and meaning is to refer to reality, to suggest it, to bring it nearer us. Its fault is that it is an imperfect, partial, one-sided, or even one-pointed idea. It is really an instance and phase of