The chain of representations can, in effect, by means of the power it possesses to duplicate itself (in imagination and memory, and in the multiple attention employed in comparison), rediscover, below the disorder of the earth, the unbroken expanse of beings; memory, random at first, and at the mercy of representations as they capriciously present themselves to it, is gradually immobilized in the form of a general table of all that exists; man is then able to include the world in the sovereignty of a discourse that has the power to represent its representation.