But if I investigate more closely the relation of given cognitions in
every judgement, and distinguish it, as belonging to the understanding,
from the relation which is produced according to laws of the
reproductive imagination (which has only subjective validity), I find
that judgement is nothing but the mode of bringing given cognitions
under the objective unit of apperception. This is plain from our use of
the term of relation is in judgements, in order to distinguish the
objective unity of given representations from the subjective unity. For
this term indicates the relation of these representations to the
original apperception, and also their necessary unity, even although
the judgement is empirical, therefore contingent, as in the judgement:
“All bodies are heavy.” I do not mean by this, that these
representations do necessarily belong to each other in empirical
intuition, but that by means of the necessary unity of appreciation
they belong to each other in the synthesis of intuitions, that is to
say, they belong to each other according to principles of the objective
determination of all our representations, in so far as cognition can
arise from them, these principles being all deduced from the main
principle of the transcendental unity of apperception. In this way
alone can there arise from this relation a judgement, that is, a
relation which has objective validity, and is perfectly distinct from
that relation of the very same representations which has only
subjective validity—a relation, to wit, which is produced according to
laws of association. According to these laws, I could only say: “When I
hold in my hand or carry a body, I feel an impression of weight”; but I
could not say: “It, the body, is heavy”; for this is tantamount to
saying both these representations are conjoined in the object, that is,
without distinction as to the condition of the subject, and do not
merely stand together in my perception, however frequently the
perceptive act may be repeated.
All Sensuous Intuitions are subject to the Categories, as Conditions
under which alone the manifold Content of them can be united in one
Consciousness § 16