83. There is no order in our thoughts except as we compare them with each other: all our intellectual acts are reduced to the perception and comparison of ideas; in perception there is simplicity, as there must also be in comparisons, since there can be no comparison of that which is varied, except by reducing the varied to that which is one, that is, to the relation which is perceived in the comparison. Therefore in every thought there is unity; thought can never be conceived as the concurrence of many agents; therefore the proposition, which Kant considered indemonstrable, is demonstrated,--that many representations cannot form a thought except in so far as they are contained in the absolute unity of a thinking subject. 84. Let us present the same demonstration under a stricter form. Suppose A, B, C, to be the three agents concurring in the formation of the thought; each part will yield its contingent; let us suppose _a_ to correspond to the first, _b_ to the second, and _c_ to the third, the result will be the union composed of _a_, _b_, and _c_; this will be the thought; it will therefore be triple and can never constitute a point of comparison; therefore, we must either reject this hypothesis, or deny thought. Kant's sophism proceeds from his attending solely to the diversity of the representations, and abstracting the unity which is always met with in the perception of this diversity; hence it is nothing strange that he does not find unity in the conception of thought. He presents this conception incompletely, or rather, falsely; he presents thought as a collection of representations, and not as a most simple point in which representations unite, in order to be perceived in the relation which they have among themselves. The diversity of the representations does not form a collection after the manner of sensible objects; the thought, in which the relation of two different triangles is known, cannot be expressed by the sum of the figures of the two triangles; it is something different from them; something which is in the midst of them; which unites them by comparing them, and which joins their diversity in the unity of their relation. 85. The example brought by Kant manifests the rudeness of his idea of the character of the union of the representations in the formation of a whole thought. The unity of the thought is, he says, collective, and may be referred to the collective unity of many substances, just as the motion of a body is the motion composed of all the parts of the body. Here we see clearly wherein Kant's equivocation consists; he takes the collection of the representations for the thought which relates to them, and therefore it is no wonder that he cannot see the unity implied in the diversity, on the supposition that this diversity has to be thought.