But this new causality stands under certain conditions of freedom, since it is dependent not only upon the above described attention, and upon a proficiency in this sort of reproduction on the part of imagination—a proficiency that can be acquired only gradually—but furthermore upon the fact, that the point, which is to be reproduced, must have been clearly and vividly perceived at first. Nor must this reawakening of a single sensual part—which in our representation is something altogether new—be mistaken for the reproduction of the whole image through freedom; for whereas in the latter instance freedom furnishes the whole act of construction, it in the former furnishes only attention: in the latter there are two elements, the whole sphere of that which is to be determined and that as which it is to be determined; whereas in the former there is only a single element, which manifests itself without any free act of volition, just as it did in sensuous perception.
4. This described attention, therefore, observes for the sake of reproduction and according to the rules thereof. Supervision it already has, voluntarily checking itself everywhere, bringing the observed matter under its proper classification, and determining the qualitative through its limits. Thus it becomes quite clear what that freedom and considerateness is, of which I said before that it pervades attention. Thus, for instance, you now attend to my lecture with a view to reproducing it. This reproduction will occur all the more easily and happily if you attend to it at once according to a rule of future reproduction; that is, if you not only seize what I say, but, particularly, seize it in the same order in which I say it and observe why I say it in this particular order, attending well to the transitions I make and the reasons why I make them; in short, if you get possession not only of the contents of my lecture, but also of the rule according to which I produce it.
5. It is now also clear how immediate perception is distinguished from its mere image in reproduction. The latter is always accompanied by the consciousness of self-activity, and there arises in it not a single trait whereof the Ego would not be compelled to say, I make it; whereas actual perception is always accompanied by the consciousness of compulsion and confinedness.
6. Reproduction is, therefore, a self-limitation of the power of imagination within its whole sphere according to the prescription of a limitation of the external sense. The rule of this limitation is the conception of that object of external perception which is to be reproduced.
Give me a conception of a—to me unknown—object, signifies: give me the rule according to which I can construe it in free thinking.
Hence arises the very correct logical rule of definition, that it should furnish both the genus—the general sphere of the power of imagination—and the differentia specifica—that part to which imagination is to confine itself within that general sphere. We here learn also what logic holds to be thinking; namely, the free constructing according to such a rule. The science of Logic, therefore, begins within the sphere of the already acquired free imagination and ignores the real basis of all consciousness. Logic holds that to think is the same as to imagine something, and—since there is not even a prototype of external perception as a guidance—to imagine something voluntarily; and this is, in fact, a conception of thinking which has become current amongst the whole philosophizing public, but which utterly prevents it from entering the sphere of true philosophy: a proper example as to what the over-estimation of logic and its position at the head of philosophical education, or even as philosophy itself, have effected.
7. Does there occur here in consciousness something absolutely a prioriand altogether new? I say, certainly. For whence does knowledge obtain its maxim to follow such and no other rule in reproduction? Evidently only out of itself, and moreover from its now more closely determined power to reproduce only through a limitation. Hence knowledge here and by virtue of this contemplation gives unto itself the qualitative law of reproduction.
8. The aim of reproduction is to get possession of the world of external perception independently itself. The source of this world has now been placed within the control of our freedom, to let it flow or check it as we may choose. Thus every science—for instance, natural science—possesses its whole world as its property, and must so possess it, in order to be able to subject at any moment each part thereof to its investigation.