In other words, representations must exist in consciousness before they can become associated; and they can exist in consciousness only if they are consciously apprehended. But in order to be consciously apprehended, they must conform to the transcendental conditions upon which all consciousness rests; and in being thus apprehended they are set in thoroughgoing unity to one another and to the self. They are apprehended as belonging to an objective order or unity which is the correlate of the unity of self-consciousness. This is what Kant entitles their objective affinity; it is what conditions and makes possible their associative or empirical connection. This main point is very definitely stated in A 101. “If we can show that even our purest _a priori_ intuitions yield no knowledge, save in so far as they contain such a connection of the manifold as will make possible a thoroughgoing synthesis of reproduction, this synthesis of the imagination” [which acts through the machinery of association] “must be grounded, prior to all experience, on _a priori_ principles, and since experience necessarily presupposes that appearances can be reproduced, we shall have to assume a pure transcendental synthesis of the imagination” [_i.e._ such synthesis as is involved in the unity of consciousness] “as conditioning even the possibility of all experience.”[900] In A 121-2 Kant expresses his position in a more ambiguous manner. He may seem to the reader merely to be arguing that a certain minimum of regularity is necessary in order that representations may be associated, and experience may be possible.[901] But the general tenor of the passage as a whole, and especially its concluding sentences, enforce the stronger, more consistent, thesis.