| By the word synthesis, in its most general signification, I understand the process of joining different representations to each other and of comprehending their diversity in one cognition. |
| This synthesis is pure when the diversity is not given empirically but a priori (as that in space and time). |
| Our representations must be given previously to any analysis of them; and no conceptions can arise, quoad their content, analytically. |
| But the synthesis of a diversity (be it given a priori or empirically) is the first requisite for the production of a cognition, which in its beginning, indeed, may be crude and confused, and therefore in need of analysis--still, synthesis is that by which alone the elements of our cognitions are collected and united into a certain content, consequently it is the first thing on which we must fix our attention, if we wish to investigate the origin of our knowledge. |
| Synthesis, generally speaking, is, as we shall afterwards see, the mere operation of the imagination--a blind but indispensable function of the soul, without which we should have no cognition whatever, but of the working of which we are seldom even conscious. |
| But to reduce this synthesis to conceptions is a function of the understanding, by means of which we attain to cognition, in the proper meaning of the term. |
| Pure synthesis, represented generally, gives us the pure conception of the understanding. |
| But by this pure synthesis, I mean that which rests upon a basis of a priori synthetical unity. |
| Thus, our numeration (and this is more observable in large numbers) is a synthesis according to conceptions, because it takes place according to a common basis of unity (for example, the decade). |
| By means of this conception, therefore, the unity in the synthesis of the manifold becomes necessary. |
| By means of analysis different representations are brought under one conception--an operation of which general logic treats. |
| On the other hand, the duty of transcendental logic is to reduce to conceptions, not representations, but the pure synthesis of representations. |
| The first thing which must be given to us for the sake of the a priori cognition of all objects, is the diversity of the pure intuition; the synthesis of this diversity by means of the imagination is the second; but this gives, as yet, no cognition. |
| The conceptions which give unity to this pure synthesis, and which consist solely in the representation of this necessary synthetical unity, furnish the third requisite for the cognition of an object, and these conceptions are given by the understanding. |
| The same function which gives unity to the different representation in a judgement, gives also unity to the mere synthesis of different representations in an intuition; and this unity we call the pure conception of the understanding. |
| Thus, the same understanding, and by the same operations, whereby in conceptions, by means of analytical unity, it produced the logical form of a judgement, introduces, by means of the synthetical unity of the manifold in intuition, a transcendental content into its representations, on which account they are called pure conceptions of the understanding, and they apply a priori to objects, a result not within the power of general logic. |
| In this manner, there arise exactly so many pure conceptions of the understanding, applying a priori to objects of intuition in general, as there are logical functions in all possible judgements. |
| For there is no other function or faculty existing in the understanding besides those enumerated in that table. |
| These conceptions we shall, with Aristotle, call categories, our purpose being originally identical with his, notwithstanding the great difference in the execution. |
| TABLE OF THE CATEGORIES |
| | 1 | Of Quantity | Unity | Reality | Plurality | | 2 | Of Quality | Negation | Totality | Limitation | | 3 | Of Relation | Of Inherence and Subsistence (substantia et accidens) | Of Causality and Dependence (cause and effect) | Of Community (reciprocity between the agent and patient) | | 4 | Of Modality | Possibility--Impossibility | Existence--Non-existence | Necessity--Contingence |
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