Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller

The unbroken identity of apperception of the manifold that is given in intuition contains a synthesis of representations, and is possible only through the consciousness of that synthesis. The empirical consciousness, which accompanies various representations, is itself various and disunited, and without reference to the identity of the subject. Such a relation takes place, not by my simply accompanying every relation with consciousness, but by ^ my adding one to the other and being conscious of that act of adding, that is, of that synthesis. Only because I am able to connect the manifold of given representations in one consciousness, is it possible for me to represent to myself the identity of the consciousness in these representations, that is, only under the supposiSupplement XIV 747 tioii of some synthetical unity of apperception does the analytical unity of apperception become possible.^

The thought that the representations given in intuition belong all of them to me, is therefore the same as that I connect them in one self-consciousness, or am able at least to do so ; and though this is not yet the consciousness of the synthesis of representations, it nevertheless presupposes the possibility of this synthesis. In other words, it is only because I am able to comprehend the manifold of representations in one consciousness, that I call them altogether my representations, for otherwise, I should have as manifold and various a self as I have representations of which I am conscious. The synthetical unity of the manifold of intuitions as given a priori is therefore the ground also of the identity of that apperception itself which precedes a priori all definite thought. Connection, however, does never lie in the objects, and cannot be borrowed from them by perception, and thus be taken into the understanding, but it is always an act of the understanding, which itself is nothing but a faculty of connecting a priori, and of bringing the manifold of given representations under the unity of apperception, which is, in fact, the highest principle of all human knowledge.

It is true, no doubt, that this principle of the necessary unity of apperception is itself identical, and therefore an analytical proposition ; but it shows, nevertheless, the necessity of a synthesis of the

1 This analytical unity of consciousness belongs to all general concepts, as such. If, for instance, I think red in general, I represent to myself a property, which (as a characteristic mark) may be found in something, or can be connected with other representations ; that is to say, only under a presupposed possible synthetical unity can I represent to myself the analytical. A representation which is to be thought as common to different representations, is looked upon as belonging to such as possess, besides it, something different. It must therefore have been thought in synthetical unity with other (though only possible) representations, before I can think in it that analytical unity of consciousness which makes it a conceptus conumaiis. The synthetical unity of apperception is, therefore, the highest point with which all employment of the understanding, and even the whole of logic, and afterwards the whole of transcendental philosophy, must be connected; ay, that faculty is the understanding itself.

748 S?ipplement XIV