nvolved, there is a
shifting of the centre of gravity. Instead of treating representations
as something which can become related to an object, he now treats
them as something of which, as belonging to a self, the self must
be capable of being conscious as its own, and argues that a
synthesis in accordance with the categories is required for this
self-consciousness. It must be admitted then--and the admission is
only to be made with reluctance--that when Kant reaches transcendental
apperception, he really adopts a new starting-point,[61] and that the
passage which introduces transcendental apperception by showing it to
be implied in knowledge[62] only serves to conceal from Kant the fact
that, from the point of view of the deduction of the categories, he is
really assuming without proof the possibility of self-consciousness
with respect to all our representations, as a new basis for argument.

[61] The existence of this new starting-point is more
explicit, A. 116-7 (and note), Mah. 208 (and note), and A.
122, Mah. 212.

[62] A. 107, Mah. 200.

The approach to the categories from the side of self-consciousness is,
however, more prominent in the second edition, and consequently we
naturally turn to it for more light on this side of Kant's position.
There Kant vindicates the necessity of the synthesis from the side of
self-consciousness as follows:[63]

[63] The main clauses have been numbered for convenience of
reference.

"[1.] It must be possible that the 'I think' should accompany all my
representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me
which could not be thought; in other words, the representation would
be either impossible or at least for me nothing. [2.] That
representation which can be given before all thought is called
_perception_. All the manifold of perception has therefore a necessary
relation to the 'I think' in the same subject in which this manifold
is found. [3.] But this representation[64] [i. e. the 'I think'] is an
act of _spontaneity_, i. e. it cannot be regarded as belonging to
sensibility. I call it _pure apperception_, to distinguish it from
_empirical apperception_, or _original apperception_ also, because it
is that self-consciousness which, while it gives birth to the
representation 'I think', which must be capable of accompanying all
others and is one and the same in all consciousness, cannot itself be
accompanied by any other.[65] [4.] I also call