manifold on a principle and makes us conscious of our activity in so doing. Hence we may say that the real meaning of the passage should be stated thus: 'Knowledge requires one consciousness which, as imagination, combines the manifold on a definite principle constituted by a conception,[36] and, as understanding, is to some extent conscious of its identical activity in so doing, this self-consciousness being, from the side of the whole produced by the synthesis, the consciousness of the conception by which the manifold is unified.' [32] The italics are mine. He does not say '_we should not be conscious_ of what we are thinking as the same representation and as belonging [Greek: ktl]., _and we should not be conscious_ of the manifold as constituting a whole. [33] The italics are mine. [34] There could not, of course, be two syntheses, the one being and the other not being upon a principle. [35] Cf. pp. 168-9. [36] In view of Kant's subsequent account of the function of the categories it should be noticed that, according to the present passage, the conception involved in an act of knowledge is the conception not of an 'object in general', but of 'an object of the particular kind which constitutes the individual whole produced by the combination a whole of the particular kind that it is of', and that, in accordance with this, the self-consciousness involved is not the mere consciousness that our combining activity is identical throughout, but the consciousness that it is an identical activity of a particular kind, e. g. that of counting five units. Cf. pp. 184 fin.-186, 190-2, and 206-7. Hitherto there has been no mention of an _object_ of knowledge, and since knowledge is essentially knowledge of an object, Kant's next task is to give such an account of an object of knowledge as will show that the processes already described are precisely those which give our representations, i. e. the manifold of sense, relation to an object, and consequently yield knowledge.