  Lessing does not appeal to any philosophical theory to back up this insistence. But his next step is to buttress his argument by borrowing Mendelssohn’s idea that since the visual arts present objects in a single moment, they must choose that moment carefully, and in particular they must choose a moment that gives “free rein” to the imagination. Even if it were to be conceded that “Truth and expression are art’s first law,” which Lessing is not actually willing to concede, this would still hold. Thus paintings and sculptures must not represent the moment of the culmination of an action, which leaves nothing further to the imagination, but a moment of anticipation which leaves the imagination free to play with further possibilities (Laocoön, chapter 3, p. 19). The artist of the Laocoön did not represent his subject at the moment of his greatest pain and full scream because that would have foreclosed the free play of the imagination of the audience for the work. Here Lessing at least tacitly invokes the new theory that the play of our mental powers rather than the representation of some form of truth is the fundamental aim of art, or at least visual art.