“Impressions are not yet representations, for they must be related to something else which is an action. Now the reaction of the mind is an action which relates to the impression, and which if taken alone[850] may in its special forms receive the title categories.”[851] “We can know the connection of things in the world only if we produce it through a universal action, and so out of a principle of inner power (_aus einem Prinzip der inneren Potestas_): substance, ground, combination.”[852] These _Reflexionen_ recognise only the categories of relation,[853] and must therefore be prior to the twelvefold classification. There is not the least trace of the characteristic doctrines of the third and fourth stages of the deduction, viz. of the transcendental function of the imagination or of a threefold transcendental synthesis. The nature of apprehension is also most obscure. It is frequently equated with apperception. (3) The _Lose Blätter aus Kants Nachlass_ (Heft I.) contains fragments which also belong to the second stage of the deduction, but which would seem to be of somewhat earlier date than the above _Reflexionen_.[854] They have interesting points of contact with the first stage. Thus though the phrase transcendental object does not occur in them, the object of knowledge is equated with _x_, and is regarded in the manner of the first stage as the opposite counterpart of the unity of the self.[855] These fragments belong, however, to the second stage in virtue of their recognition of the _a priori_ categories of relation. There is also here, as is in the _Reflexionen_, great lack of clearness regarding the nature of apprehension; and there is still no mention of the transcendental faculty of imagination. Fragment 8 is definitely datable. It covers the free spaces of a letter of invitation dated May 20, 1775.[856] Fragment B 12[857] belongs to a different period from the above. This is sufficiently evident from its contents; but fortunately the paper upon which it is written--an official document in the handwriting of the Rector of the Philosophical Faculty of Königsberg--enables us to decide the exact year of its origin. It is dated January 20, 1780. The fragment must therefore be subsequent to that date. Now in it transcendental imagination appears as a third faculty alongside sensibility and understanding, and a distinction is definitely drawn between its empirical and its transcendental employment. The former conditions the synthesis of apprehension; the latter conditions the synthetic unity of apperception. It further distinguishes between reproductive and productive imagination, and ascribes the former exclusively to the empirical imagination. In all these respects it stands in complete agreement with the teaching of the third stage of the deduction. The fact that this fragment is subsequent to January 1780 would seem to prove that even at that late date Kant was