The image can only be studied through the image, by dreaming images as they gather in reverie. It is a non-sense to claim to study imagination objectively since one really receives the image only if he admires it. Already in comparing one image to another, one runs the risk of losing participation in its individuality.

On poetic imagination and reverie: selections from the works of Gaston Bachelard (ed. Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1971)