has in mind normally the process of imagining, we can see why he found no difficulty in the thought of knowledge as construction. For while we cannot reasonably speak of making _an object of knowledge_, we can reasonably speak of making _a mental image_ through our own activity, and also of making it in accordance with the categories and the empirical laws which presuppose them. Moreover, the ease with which it is possible to take the imagining which accompanies knowing for knowing[40]--the image formed being taken to be the object known and the forming it being taken to be the knowing it--renders it easy to transfer the thought of construction to the knowledge itself. The only defect, however, under which the view labours is the important one that, whatever be the extent to which imagination must accompany knowledge, it is distinct from knowledge. To realize the difference we have only to notice that the process by which we present to ourselves in imagination realities not present to perception presupposes, and is throughout guided by, the knowledge of them. It should be noted, however, that, although the process of which Kant is normally thinking is doubtless that of constructing mental imagery, his real view must be that knowledge consists in constructing a world out of the data of sense, or, more accurately, as his instances show, out of the objects of isolated perceptions, e. g. parts of a line or units to be counted. Otherwise the final act of recognition would be an apprehension not of the world of nature, but of an image of it. [37] B. 152, M. 93; cf. also Mah. 211, A. 120. [38] Cf. A. 102-3, Mah. 197-8. The fact is that the appeal to reproduction is a useless device intended by Kant--and by 'empirical psychologists'--to get round the difficulty of allowing that in the apprehension (in memory or otherwise) of a reality not present to perception, we are really aware of the reality. The difficulty is in reality due to a sensationalistic standpoint, avowed or unavowed, and the device is useless, because the assumption has in the end to be made, covertly or otherwise, that we are really aware of the reality in question. [39] B. 179, M. 109. Cf. the whole passage B. 176-81, M. 107-10 (part quoted pp. 249-51), and p. 251. [40] Cf. Locke and Hume.