Chapter XIV: Creative Mind Further Probed

The inmost secret of the universe lies in Kant's four words, "the synthesis of apprehension," or what he more elaborately termed "the transcendental synthesis of the image-making faculty."

"It is an operation [he says] of the understanding on sensibility, and the _first_ application of the understanding to objects of possible intuition, and at the same time _the basis for the exercise of the other functions of that faculty_."

It has been intently presented to view in these pages, because it focalises and explains the whole law of scientific idealism, and is the one most important as well as abstruse fact in the genesis of things.

But having duly dealt with this point, it must now be said that "the synthesis of apprehension," _alone_ and _ungrown_, is altogether inadequate to give form to an object, in the full import of that word. For an _object_ is something held distinct by itself, in connection with another object, or with various objects. "_Unconscious_ understanding" cannot form such connection and distinction, but can only blindly manufacture single intuitions, affording at most what Kant termed "a rhapsody of perceptions," in which no one would be first or last, or anything at all when past. A fish-worm, perhaps, has such a "rhapsody of perceptions" for its objective world. In the world of man the _a priori_ element of intelligence which shapes it must be objected in the phase of consciousness proper, or "apperception," as well as "simple apprehension."

In noting the difference between the synthesis of apprehension and the synthesis of apperception, Kant said:

"It is one and the same spontaneity which, at one time under the name of imagination, at another under that of understanding, produces conjunction in the manifold of intuition."

"Apperception" is simply apprehension _apprehended_, or mind adequate to self-conception and so to conceptions in general. That there can be a stone, as known to a _human being_, there must be a synthesis of sense-effects (its properties), in which they are distinguished among themselves, and of which objects as wholes are distinguished from each other. A synthesis of this kind presupposes not merely "unconscious understanding," but understanding that recognizes _itself_ in connecting all things else.

"I am conscious [said Kant] of my identical self in relation to all the variety of representations given to me in intuition, because I call all of them _my_ representations.... The thought, 'These representations, given in intuition, belong all of them to me,' is just the same as 'I unite them in one self-conscious.'... Synthetical unity of the manifold in intuition, as given _a priori_, is therefore the foundation of the identity of apperception itself, which antecedes _a priori_ all determinate thought. But the conjunction of representations into a conception is not to be found in objects themselves ... but is on the contrary, an operation of the understanding itself, which is nothing more than the faculty of conjoining _a priori_, and of bringing the variety of given representations under the unity of apperception. This principle is the highest in all human cognition."

So, to the _existence_ of any _distinguishable object_, there must _pre-exist_ the element of mind in the phase of _self_-consciousness as well as _sub_-consciousness. Both must enter the object. Hence, when Kant talked of "_the objective unity of self-consciousness_"--another of his profoundest deductions--he meant literally that "the synthetical unity of apperception," as well as "the synthetical unity of apprehension," is _materialized_ in all _conceivable things_. To form the sense-effects of a stone into a single "intuition," they must be merged in a synthesis of apprehension; but to _set_ the intuition as thus created--to make it remain _itself_ in the midst of _others_, it must be merged with them in a higher synthesis--a common connective consciousness, which, distinguishing them in itself, re-presents them as distinguished.

It was here that Kant reached his famous "_Categories_," which are merely reflexes of the pure synthetical unity of mind, as forming the unity of all things and of all connection among them.

The principle of mind, beginning, as we have seen, even with the instinctive mind of sense, is a spontaneous self-activity, receptive, reflexive, and resumptive of its doubles. By being the first, it unifies any and every manifold of sense-effects; by being the second, it _re_-presents the product--throws it _out_; by being the third, it apprehends the externalisation, and a percept is born. Apperception, or full consciousness, is the same self-activity, self-reflex, self-sight, transformed into "understanding." Thus, mind is essentially a _triad_ as well as a _unit_. But, if so, it must reflect itself to conception as a "_Quantity_"--a sum of its own phases; and in these phases, it is a "Unity," a "_Plurality_," and a "_Totality_."

Mind, again, as just _a-priori_ principle and basis of all things, is manifestly their universal "Quality." But, as self-reflexive, self-resumptive, it is at once a "_Reality_," a "_Negation_," and a "_Limitation_," which means it is that which, in its double, contraposes one state to another, while, as a whole, it is the limit of both states.

It goes without saying that a principle of self-reflex is the "Relation" of its reflexes, and in this relation is a "_Substance_ with _Dependence_," a "_Cause_ with _Effect_," and a "_Reciprocity_" of its separates.

This is a very short cut to the Kantian Categories, but sufficient, perhaps, if we bear in mind that, while _implicit_ in the mind of sense, they are reflexes of conscious, not "unconscious" understanding. The synthesis of mind through conceptions proceeds, not by the formation of sense-effects into units of intuition, but by the formation of these already-made units (objects or their properties) into species, genera, and ultimate universals--the pure unity of these groupings, without regard to the things grouped, being just the pure _a priori_ unity of self-conscious awareness. Thus, those ultimate universals, the categories, are objective reproductions of pure conceptive synthesis, without which there could be _no connection of things in thought_--which would amount precisely to no _realised objects_ and no _objective experience_.

One of Kant's industrious reviewers, Sir William Hamilton, fancied that Aristotle's categories were "genera of real things," while Kant's categories were "determinations of thought," and, as mere "_entia rationis_," must "be excluded from the Aristotelic list." But there are no "genera of real things" except _as_ "determinations of thought"; and, in making an experimental classification of objects, Aristotle found some of the Kantian categories, because the synthetical unity of mind had put those categories into the objects at the creation of them. To Kant an _object_ meant something of which Sir William Hamilton had no boding.