That is to say, the self is the sole source of all unity. As a pure and original unity it precedes experience; to its synthetic activities all conceptual unity is due; and by reflection upon the constancy of these activities it comes to consciousness of its own identity. “...even the purest objective unity, namely that of the _a priori_ concepts (space and time), is possible only through relation of the intuitions to [transcendental apperception]. The numerical unity of this apperception is therefore the _a priori_ condition of all concepts, just as the manifoldness of space and of time is of the intuitions of sensibility.”[769] To this consciousness of the abiding unity of the self Kant also traces the notion of the transcendental object. The latter, he would seem to argue, is formed by analogy from the former. “This object is nothing else than the subjective representation (of the subject) itself, but made general, for I am the original of all objects.”[770] “The mind, through its original and underived thinking, is itself the pattern (_Urbild_) of such a synthesis.”[771] “I would not represent anything as outside me, and so make [subjective] appearances into objective experience if the representations were not related to something which is parallel to my ego, and so in that way referred by me to another subject.”[772] These quotations from the _Lose Blätter_ would seem to contain the key to Kant’s extremely enigmatic statement in A 105, that “the unity which the object makes necessary can be nothing else than the formal unity of consciousness in its synthesis of the manifold of its representations,” and again in A 109, that “this relation [of representations to an object] is nothing else than the necessary unity of consciousness.”[773] But this does not complete the sum-total of the functions which Kant is at this stage prepared to assign to apperception. It mediates our consciousness of the transcendental object in still another manner, namely, by rendering possible the formation of the _empirical_ concepts which unify and direct its synthetic activities. This is, indeed, the feature in which this form of the deduction diverges most radically from all later positions. Space and time are, it would seem, regarded as being the sole _a priori_ concepts.[774] The instruments through which the unity of apperception acts, and through which the thought of an object becomes possible, are _empirical_ concepts. Such general concepts as “body” or “triangle” serve as rules constraining the synthetic processes of apprehension and reproduction to take place in such unitary fashion as is required for unitary consciousness. The notion of objectivity is specified in terms of the necessities which these empirical concepts thus impose.