general of all ideas, including perceptions, within the mind to things outside it; and this problem does not relate specially to _a priori_ judgements. To discover the problem which relates specially to them, the other alternative must be accepted, that of ignoring relation to the subject in both cases. The problem then becomes 'What renders possible or is presupposed by the conformity of individual things to certain laws of connexion?' And, inasmuch as to deny the conformity is really to deny that there are laws of connexion,[14] the problem reduces itself to the question, 'What is the presupposition of the existence of definite laws of connexion in the world?' And the only answer possible is that reality is a system or a whole of connected parts, in other words, that nature is uniform. Thus it turns out that the problem relates to the uniformity of nature, and that the question 'How are _a priori_ synthetic judgements possible?' has in reality nothing to do with the problem of the relation of reality to the knowing subject, but is concerned solely with the nature of reality. [14] To object that the laws in question, being laws which we have thought, may not be the true laws, and that therefore there may still be other laws to which reality conforms, is of course to reintroduce relation to the thinking subject. Further, it is important to see that the alternative of ignoring relation to the subject is the right one, not only from the point of view of the problem peculiar to _a priori_ judgements, but also from the point of view of the nature of knowledge in general. Perceiving and thinking alike presuppose that reality is immediately object of the mind, and that the act of apprehension in no way affects or enters into the nature of what we apprehend about reality. If, for instance, I assert on the strength of perception that this table is round, I imply that I see the table, and that the shape which I judge it to have is not affected by the fact that I am perceiving it; for I mean that the table really is round. If some one then convinces me that I have made a mistake owing to an effect of foreshortening, and that the table is really oval, I amend my assertion, not by saying that the table is round but only to my apprehension, but by saying that it looks round. Thereby I cease to predicate roundness of the table altogether; for I mean that while it still looks round, it is not really so. The case of universal judgements is similar. The statement that a straight line is the shortest distance between its extremities means that it really is so. The fact is presupposed to be in no way altered by our having apprehended it. Moreover, reality is here just as much implied to be directly object of the mind as it is in the case of the singular judgement. Making the judgement consists, as we say, in _seeing_ the connexion between the direction between two points and the shortest distance between them. The connexion of real