ciples, which
afterwards turn out to be the categories, by showing this to be
involved in the fact that we must be capable of being conscious of
ourselves as the identical subject of all our representations. To do
this, he seeks to prove in the first paragraph that self-consciousness
in this sense must be possible, and in the second that this
self-consciousness presupposes the synthesis of the manifold.

Examination of the argument, however, shows that the view that
self-consciousness must be possible is, so far as Kant is
concerned,[69] an assumption for which Kant succeeds in giving no
reason at all, and that even if it be true, it cannot form a basis
from which to deduce the possibility of the synthesis.

[69] Cf. p. 204, note 3.

Before, however, we attempt to prove this, it is necessary to draw
attention to three features of the argument. In the _first_ place, it
implies a somewhat different account of self-consciousness to that
implied in the passages of the first edition which we have already
considered. Self-consciousness, instead of being the consciousness of
the identity of our activity in combining the manifold, is now
primarily the consciousness of ourselves as identical subjects of all
our representations, i. e. it is what Kant calls the analytical unity
of apperception; and consequently it is somewhat differently related
to the activity of synthesis involved in knowledge. Instead of being
regarded as the consciousness of this activity, it is regarded as
presupposing the consciousness of the product of this activity, i. e.
of the connectedness[70] of the manifold produced by the activity,
this consciousness being what Kant calls the synthetical unity of
apperception.[71] In the _second_ place, it is plain that Kant's view
is not that self-consciousness involves the consciousness of our
representations as a connected whole, but that it involves the
consciousness of them as capable of being connected by a synthesis.
Yet, if it is only because I can connect (and therefore apprehend as
connected) a manifold of representations in one consciousness, that I
can represent to myself the identity of consciousness in these
representations, self-consciousness really requires the consciousness
of our representations as _already_ connected; the mere consciousness
of our representations as _capable_ of being connected would not be
enough. The explanation of the inconsistency seems to lie in the fact
that the synth