The schema of possibility is the accordance of the synthesis of
different representations with the conditions of time in general (as,
for example, opposites cannot exist together at the same time in the
same thing, but only after each other), and is therefore the
determination of the representation of a thing at any time.
The schema of reality is existence in a determined time.
The schema of necessity is the existence of an object in all time.
It is clear, from all this, that the schema of the category of quantity
contains and represents the generation (synthesis) of time itself, in
the successive apprehension of an object; the schema of quality the
synthesis of sensation with the representation of time, or the filling
up of time; the schema of relation the relation of perceptions to each
other in all time (that is, according to a rule of the determination of
time): and finally, the schema of modality and its categories, time
itself, as the correlative of the determination of an object—whether it
does belong to time, and how. The schemata, therefore, are nothing but
à priori determinations of time according to rules, and these, in
regard to all possible objects, following the arrangement of the
categories, relate to the series in time, the content in time, the
order in time, and finally, to the complex or totality in time.
Hence it is apparent that the schematism of the understanding, by means
of the transcendental synthesis of the imagination, amounts to nothing
else than the unity of the manifold of intuition in the internal sense,
and thus indirectly to the unity of apperception, as a function
corresponding to the internal sense (a receptivity). Thus, the schemata
of the pure conceptions of the understanding are the true and only
conditions whereby our understanding receives an application to
objects, and consequently significance. Finally, therefore, the
categories are only capable of empirical use, inasmuch as they serve
merely to subject phenomena to the universal rules of synthesis, by
means of an à priori necessary unity (on account of the necessary union
of all consciousness in one original apperception); and so to render
them susceptible of a complete connection in one experience. But within
this whole of possible experience lie all our cognitions, and in the
universal relation to this experience consists transcendental truth,
which antecedes all empirical truth, and renders the latter possible.