Rhetorical figures of speech are a common occurrence in language. We employ them consciously as such. There are also philosophical figures of speech, which can be recognized by analysis. By philosophical figures Maimon understands imaginary ideas or fictions that are represented by concepts, to which they do not adequately correspond, but which are applied only by virtue of an act of imagination. These concepts were originally formed with reference to objects for which they were adequate. They are real only in relation to the objects constituting their original domain; they are imaginary when abstracted from these objects and transferred to other objects by an act of the imagination. Philosophical figures differ from rhetorical figures merely in that their origin is more difficult to determine. It is the task of philosophy to demonstrate the illusory nature of the "fictional" character of these concepts by discovering their true origin.