he
object, that is, without distinction as to the condition of the
subject, and are not merely connected together in the perception,
however often it may be repeated.'"[90]

[89] _Erkenntnisse_ here is clearly used as a synonym for
representations. Cf. A. 104, Mah. 199.

[90] B. 140-2, M. 86-8; cf. _Prol._, Secs. 18-20.

This ground for the identification of the categories with the
principles of synthesis involved in knowledge may be ignored, as on
the face of it unsuccessful. For the argument is that since the
activity by which the synthesis is affected is that of judgement, the
conceptions shown by the _Metaphysical Deduction_ to be involved in
judgement must constitute the principles of synthesis. But it is
essential to this argument that the present account of judgement and
that which forms the basis of the _Metaphysical Deduction_ should be
the same; and this is plainly not the case.[91] Judgement is now
represented as an act by which we relate the manifold of sense in
certain necessary ways as parts of the physical world,[92] whereas in
the _Metaphysical_ _Deduction_ it was treated as an act by which we
relate conceptions; and Kant now actually says that this latter
account is faulty. Hence even if the metaphysical deduction had
successfully derived the categories from the account of judgement
which it presupposed, the present argument would not justify the
identification of the categories so deduced with the principles of
synthesis. The fact is that Kant's vindication of the categories is in
substance independent of the _Metaphysical Deduction_. Kant's real
thought, as opposed to his formal presentation of it, is simply that
when we come to consider what are the principles of synthesis involved
in the reference of the manifold to an object, we find that they are
the categories.[93] The success, then, of this step in Kant's
vindication of the categories is independent of that of the
metaphysical deduction, and depends solely upon the question whether
the principles of synthesis involved in knowledge are in fact the
categories.

[91] Cf. Caird, i. 348-9 note.

[92] We may notice in passing that this passage renders
explicit the extreme difficulty of Kant's view that 'the
objective unity of apperception' is the unity of the parts of
nature or of the physical world. How can the 'very same
representations' stand at once in the subjective relation of
association and in th