A final explanation, not less important than those already given, concerns the _importance_ of the logical _a priori_ synthesis. This too has been diminished by the very man who discovered and defined that mental act, and even more by those who have repeated him, without being capable of reviving again the moment of discovery, and of understanding the intimate reasons that brought it about. When the concept was placed outside and prior to the representative element, and thought prior to and outside the world, so that the former was applied to the latter, the world was bound to appear to be something inferior to the concept, a degradation or an impure contact, which thought had to undergo. When, on the other hand, the representative element was placed outside and prior to the concept, the latter seemed to be inferior to it, almost as though it were an expedient for taking hold of the world, without truly being able to do so, and thus in its turn a degradation or defilement of it. Hence the sigh that we hear already in antiquity and more strongly in modern times: oh, if _words_ (that is to say _concepts,_ because concepts were called words) were not, how directly should we apprehend things! Oh, if _thought_ were not, how vigorously should we embrace genuine reality! In the first instance, reality is inferior to the concept, in the second the concept to reality; but in both alike, the two elements are always thought--as mutually external and truth as undiscoverable. Thus both these one-sided tendencies end in mystery. According to the former, the world is created by a God external to it, and will be disintegrated when it shall seem good to him, while the latter holds that the truth of things is plunged in impenetrable darkness. But granted the idea of the _a priori_ synthesis, reality is not inferior to thought nor thought to reality, nor is the one external to the other. Representations are docile to thought, and thought conceals representations even less than the tenuous and scanty veil concealed the beauty of Alcina. The interpenetration of the two elements is perfect, and they constitute unity. The false belief in the externality and heterogeneity of reality and thought can only arise when for the pure concept and the _a priori_ synthesis there are substitutes, either abstract concepts with their related analytic judgments, which are void of all representative content, or empirical concepts with their related and merely synthetic judgments, which are without logical form. The value of the _a priori_ synthesis lies in its efficacy in putting an end to doubts as to the _objectivity_ of thought and the _cognizability_ of reality, and in making triumphant the power of thought over the real, which is the power of the real to know itself. [Sidenote: _Power of the a priori synthesis never known to its discoverer._]