critical and analytical account of the nature of sensations and 

 space and time, a theory of sensations and space and time which, 

 for the reasons stated, cannot be accepted. If the original assump- 

 tion, which he made, manifested itself in the aesthetic, it manifests 

 itself a fortiori in his analytic, where he proceeds to deduce, sup- 

 posedly from the nature of the understanding, the so-called cate- 

 gories of the understanding. It is a common criticism urged against 

 Kant that the twelve categories, which, he affirmed, belong to the 

 understanding, were chosen somewhat arbitrarily, and based 

 mainly upon the conclusions of formal logic. This criticism is 

 quite true, and the subsequent development of philosophy soon 

 undertook to give what was thought to be a more adequate treat- 

 ment of these categories. There is, however, another point of 

 which any critical consideration of Kant's deduction of the cate- 

 gories must take account. It is here that his original assumption 

 once more blinds Kant's eyes to the facts, and so leads him into 

 further error. The table of twelve categories which Kant sets 

 down constitutes, he claims, "all original pure concepts of syn- 

 thesis, which belong to the understandings priori". 1 These cate- 

 gories or concepts of synthesis are, in their unity, what Kant 

 calls the Original Synthetical Unity of Apperception, and, just 

 as the highest principle of the possibility of perception in relation 

 to sensibility was that it should be subject to the formal conditions 

 of space and time, so again "the highest principle of the same 

 possibility in relation to the understanding is, that all the manifold 

 in intuition (perception) must be subject to the conditions v of the 

 original synthetical unity of apperception". 2 Because these con- 

 cepts are a priori, and originally in the understanding, the claim 

 of science to universality and necessity is, Kant believes, validated. 

 But why must the Konigsberg philosopher treat these concepts 

 or categories as originating in a source different from that which 

 gives rise to sensations? Why must these concepts be attributed 

 to an understanding which is fundamentally different from sensi- 

 bility? There is no answer to this question in the critiques of Kant, 

 simply because he did not realise the nature of the mistaken assump- 

 tion with which his work commenced. Knowledge, he held, 

 implies both sensibility and understanding, but these are not for 



1 Op. Cit. P. 67. 



2 Op. Cit. P. 748. 



110 



