[Sidenote: _or imperfect concepts preparatory to perfect concepts._]
This indispensability of conceptual fictions to the life of the spirit, finds acknowledgment in a more temperate form of the doctrine which considers them as erroneous concepts; that is, in the thesis that they are erroneous, but at the same time preparatory to, and almost a first step towards, the formation of true and proper concepts. The spirit does not issue all at once from representations and attain to the universal; it issues from them little by little, and prior to the rigorous universal, it constructs others less rigorous, which have the advantage of replacing the infinite representations with their infinite shades, through which reality presents itself in æsthetic contemplation. Conceptual fictions, then, would be sketches of concepts, and therefore, like all sketches, capable of revision and annulment, but useful. Thus it would be explained how they are errors, and errors made for a good reason. But this moderate theory also clashes noisily with the most evident facts. Above all, it is not true that the spirit issues little by little from the representations, passing through a series of grades; the procedure of the spirit, in this regard, is altogether different, and when philosophers have wanted to find a comparison for it, they have been obliged to come back to that very 'leap' which they wanted to avoid: "Spirit (said Schelling, for example,) is an _eternal island,_ which is not to be reached from matter, without a leap, whatever turns and twists be made." And, for this very reason, conceptual fictions are not good passages to rigorous concepts: to think rigorously, we must plunge ourselves again into the flood of representations and think immediate reality, clearing away the obstacles that proceed from conceptual fictions. And always for the same reason, rigorous concepts, when they find themselves confronted with conceptual fictions as rivals in the same problem, do not claim their assistance, nor correct, nor refine upon them, in order partially to preserve them, but combat and destroy them. What the rigorous concepts are unable to do, is to prevent the others from reappearing; because the spirit, as has been seen, preserves, without correcting them, although it has recognized their falsity: it preserves them, that is to say, not fused and rendered true in the rigorous concepts, but _outside and after these._