the one hand, and into their free independently existing Essence on the other. Since this is not as yet a Thing, nor represents, in fact, the categories of the Understanding, and is not abstract independence produced by thought, it is the free independence of ordinary conception; and this is the idea formed of man, or at least of what has life, which consequently may be, in a general sense, called the Objectivity of Imagination. In order to conceive of the sun, the sky, a tree as existing, as self-sustained, it is only necessary for us to have a sensuous picture or image of it, to which nothing which appears heterogeneous has to be added in order that it may be thus presented to us as self-sustained or independent. But show or semblance is a deception. The image, when represented to us as independent, as having Being, and when regarded by us as such, has for us just the character of Being, of a force, of a causality, of a form of activity, of a soul; it is in these categories that it has its independence. But in so far as the independence has not as yet advanced to the prose of Understanding, for which the category of force or of cause is the characteristic quality of objectivity generally, the apprehension and expression of that independence is this poetry, which makes the idea of human nature and outward form the supporting basis and Essence of the external world, or, it may be, even animal form, or the human form in combination with the animal. This poetry is, in fact, the rational element in imagination, for this rational element is to be kept firm hold of, although consciousness, as before stated, has not yet advanced to the category, and thus the element of independence is to be taken out of the world which is around us, and, in fact, in direct contrast to what is not independent, to what is conceived as external. And here it is animal and human existence alone which is the form, mode, and nature of what is free among things. The sun, the sea, a tree, and the like, are, as a matter of fact, without independence as compared with what lives and is free; and it is these forms of indepen-
