The phrase transcendental object occurs once in the second _Analogy_[788] and twice in the _Note on Amphiboly_.[789] The passage in the second _Analogy_ may very well, in view of the kind of subjectivism which it expounds, be of early date of writing. By transcendental object Kant there quite obviously means the thing in itself. From the first reference in the _Note on Amphiboly_ no definite conclusions can be drawn. The argument is too closely bound up with his criticism of Leibniz to allow of his own independent standpoint being properly developed. There is, however, nothing in it which compels us to regard it as of late origin; and quite evidently Kant here means by the transcendental object the thing in itself. The phrase _substantia phaenomenon_ is not, as might at first sight seem, equivalent to the empirical object of Kant’s phenomenalist teaching. It is an adaptation of Leibnizian phraseology.[790] The second reference in the _Note on Amphiboly_ occurs in a passage which may perhaps be of later origin;[791] but the transcendental object is there mentioned only in order to afford opportunity for the statements that it cannot be thought through any of the categories, that we are completely ignorant whether it is within or without us, and whether if sensibility were removed it would vanish or remain, and that it can therefore serve only as a limiting concept. We here observe it in the very process of being eliminated. As we shall find, Kant’s teaching is ill-expressed in the sections on _Amphiboly_; so much so that they could not be recast without seriously disturbing the balance of his architectonic. They were therefore allowed to remain unaltered in the second edition. We may now pass to the _Dialectic_. The subjectivist doctrine of the transcendental object is there expressed in a much more uncompromising manner. Let us first consider the references to the transcendental object in the _Paralogisms_ and in the subsequent _Reflection_. The phrase transcendental object occurs twice in the second _Paralogism_, once in the third, twice in the fourth, and three times in the _Reflection_;[792] and in all these cases there is not the least uncertainty as to its denotation. It is taken as equivalent to the thing in itself, and is expounded as a necessary ingredient in the consciousness of our subjective representations as noumenally grounded.