”[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.... 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.” [As the subjective and objective deductions have demonstrated, where there is no self-consciousness there is no consciousness of any kind.] “There must therefore be an objective ground (that is, one that can be determined _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--the law, namely, that all appearances must be regarded as data of the senses which are associable in themselves and subject to general rules of universal connection in their reproduction. This objective ground of all association of appearances I entitle their _affinity_.... The objective unity of all empirical consciousness in one consciousness, that of original apperception, is the necessary condition of all possible perception; and the affinity of all appearances, near or remote, is a necessary consequence of a synthesis in imagination which is grounded _a priori_ on rules.”[927] This part of Kant’s teaching is apt to seem more obscure than it is. For the reader is not unnaturally disinclined to accept it in the very literal sense in which it is stated. That Kant means, however, exactly what he says, appears from the further consequence which he himself not only recognises as necessary, but insists upon as valid. The doctrine of objective affinity culminates in the conclusion[928] that it is “we ourselves who introduce into the appearances that order and regularity which we name nature.” The “we ourselves” refers to the mind in the transcendental activities of the productive imagination. The conscious processes of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition necessarily conform to schemata, non-consciously generated, which express the combined _a priori_ conditions of intuition and understanding required for unitary consciousness.