an object, it would
seem that in order to know that they relate to an object we need not
know the special character of their unity. Yet, as Kant states the
facts, we really have to know the special character of their unity in
order to know that they possess systematic unity in general.[51]
_Lastly_, it is easy to see the connexion of this account of an object
of representations with the preceding account of the synthesis
involved in knowledge. Kant had said that knowledge requires a
synthesis of the imagination in accordance with a definite principle,
and the recognition of the principle of the synthesis by the
understanding. From this point of view it is clear that the aim of the
present passage is to show that this process yields knowledge of an
object; for it shows that this process yields knowledge of a
phenomenal object of a particular kind, e. g. of a triangle or of a
body, and that this object as such refers to what after all is _the_
object, viz. the thing in itself.

[50] Compare 'The object of our perceptions is merely that
something of which the conception expresses such a necessity
of synthesis' (A. 106, Mah. 200), and 'An object is that in
the conception of which the manifold of a given perception is
united' (B. 137, M. 84). Cf. also A. 108, Mah. 201.

[51] Kant's position is no doubt explained by the fact that
since the object corresponding to our representations is the
thing in itself, and since we only know that this is of the
same kind in the case of every representation, it can only be
thought of as producing systematic unity, and not a unity of
a particular kind. The position is also in part due to the
fact that the principles of synthesis involved by the
phenomenal object are usually thought of by Kant as the
categories; these of course can only contribute a general
kind of unity, and not the special kind of unity belonging to
an individual object.

The position reached by Kant so far is this. Knowledge, as being
knowledge of an object, consists in a process by which the manifold of
perception acquires relation to an object. This process again is a
process of combination of the manifold into a systematic whole upon a
definite principle, accompanied by the consciousness in some degree of
the act of combination, and therefore also of the acquisition by the
manifold of the definite unity which forms the principle of
combination. In vir