[30] Kant's example shows that this consciousness is not the mere consciousness of the act of combination as throughout identical, but the consciousness of it as an identical act of a particular kind. [31] When Kant says 'this conception [i. e. the conception of the number counted] consists in the consciousness of this unity of the synthesis', he is momentarily and contrary to his usual practice speaking of a conception in the sense of the activity of conceiving a universal, and not in the sense of the universal conceived. Similarly in appealing to the meaning of _Begriff_ (conception) he is thinking of 'conceiving' as the activity of combining a manifold through a conception. As is to be expected, however, the passage involves a difficulty concerning the respective functions of the imagination and the understanding. Is the understanding represented as only recognizing a principle of unity introduced into the manifold by the imagination, or as also for the first time introducing a principle of unity? At first sight the latter alternative may seem the right interpretation. For he says that unless we were conscious that what we are thinking is identical with what we thought a moment ago, 'what we are thinking would _be_ a new representation which _did not at all belong_ to the act by which it was bound to have been gradually produced, and the manifold of the same _would never_ constitute a whole, as lacking the unity which only _consciousness can give it_.'[32] Again, in speaking of a conception--which of course implies the understanding--he says that 'it is this one consciousness which _unites_ the manifold gradually perceived and then reproduced into _one_ representation'.[33] But these statements are not decisive, for he uses the term 'recognition' in his formula for the work of the understanding, and he illustrates its work by pointing out that in counting we must _remember_ that we have added the units. Moreover, there is a consideration which by itself makes it necessary to accept the former interpretation. The passage certainly represents the understanding as recognizing the identical action of the mind in combining the manifold on a principle, whether or not it also represents the understanding as the source of this activity. But if it were the understanding which combined the manifold, there would be no synthesis which the imagination could be supposed to have performed,[34] and therefore it could play no part in knowledge at all, a consequence which must be contrary to Kant's meaning. Further if, as the general tenor of the deduction shows, the imagination is really only the understanding working unreflectively,[35] we are able to understand why Kant should for the moment cease to distinguish between the imagination and the understanding, and consequently should use language which implies that the understanding both combines the