”[The] subjective and empirical ground of reproduction according to rules is named the association of representations. If this unity of association did not also have an objective ground, which makes it impossible that appearances should be apprehended by the imagination except under the condition of a possible synthetic unity of this apprehension, it would be entirely accidental that appearances should fit into a connected whole of human knowledge. For even though we had the power of associating perceptions, it would remain entirely undetermined and accidental whether they would themselves be associable; and should they not be associable, there might exist a multitude of perceptions, and indeed an entire sensibility, in which much empirical consciousness would arise in my mind, but in a state of separation, and without belonging to one consciousness of myself. That, however, is impossible. For only in so far as I ascribe all perceptions to one consciousness (original apperception), can I say in all perceptions that I am conscious of them. There must therefore be an objective ground (that is, one that can be recognised _a priori_, antecedently to all empirical laws of the imagination) upon which may rest the possibility, nay the necessity, of a law that extends to all appearances....” Kant is not merely asserting that the associableness of ideas, and the regularity of connection which that implies, must be postulated as a condition of experience. That would be a mere begging of the issue; the correctness of the postulate would not be independently proved. Kant is really maintaining the much more important thesis, that the unity of experience, _i.e._ of consciousness, is what makes association possible at all. And since consciousness must be unitary in order to exist, there cannot be any empirical consciousness in which the conditions of association, and therefore of reproduction, are not to be found. A further misunderstanding is apt to be caused by Kant’s statement that associative affinity rests upon objective affinity. This seems to imply, in the same manner as the passage which we have just considered, that instead of proving that appearances are subject to law and order, he is merely postulating that an abiding ground of such regularity must exist in the noumenal conditions of the sense manifold. But he himself again supplies the needful correction.