iness as consisting in
relating these data. In the second place, by distinguishing the
imagination from the understanding, he is able to confine the
understanding to being the source of universals or principles of
relation in distinction from individual relations.[23] Since, however,
as has been pointed out, and as Kant himself sees at times, the
imagination is the understanding working unreflectively, this
limitation cannot be successful.

[23] Cf. p. 217.

There remain for consideration the difficulties of the second kind,
i. e. the difficulties involved in accepting its main principles at
all. These are of course the most important. Throughout the deduction
Kant is attempting to formulate the nature of knowledge. According to
him, it consists in an activity of the mind by which it combines the
manifold of sense on certain principles and is to some extent aware
that it does so, and by which it thereby gives the manifold relation
to an object. Now the fundamental and final objection to this account
is that what it describes is not knowledge at all. The justice of this
objection may be seen by considering the two leading thoughts
underlying the view, which, though closely connected, may be treated
separately. These are the thought of knowledge as a process by which
representations acquire relation to an object, and the thought of
knowledge as a process of synthesis.

It is in reality meaningless to speak of 'a process by which
representations or ideas acquire relation to an object'.[24] The
phrase must mean a process by which a mere apprehension, which, as
such, is not the apprehension of an object, becomes the apprehension
of an object. Apprehension, however, is essentially and from the very
beginning the apprehension of an object, i. e. of a reality
apprehended. If there is no object which the apprehension is 'of',
there is no apprehension. It is therefore wholly meaningless to speak
of a process by which an apprehension _becomes_ the apprehension of an
object. If when we reflected we were not aware of an object, i. e. a
reality apprehended, we could not be aware of our apprehension; for
our apprehension is the apprehension of it, and is itself only
apprehended in relation to, though in distinction from, it. It is
therefore impossible to suppose a condition of mind in which, knowing
what 'apprehension' means, we proceed to ask, 'What is meant by an
object of it?' and 'How does an apprehension become related to