In these two essays, the German playwright Heinrich von Kleist explores how humanity's mental world fits into its physical one. On the Marionette Theatre weighs the role mental awareness plays in physical actions. On the Assembly of Thoughts while Talking searches for the extent that physical stimuli determine thoughts and ideas.

We see that in matter, in the organic world, as reflection becomes darker and weaker, grace always emerges brighter and stronger. —But, like how the intersection of two lines at the same side of a point, after a passage through the infinite, suddenly appears again at the other side, or like how the image in a concave mirror stretches endlessly away until it suddenly greets us again: so it stands, when knowledge has gone through infinity, it comes to grace again; so that ...