y of association had not also an objective
ground, so that it was impossible that phenomena should be apprehended
by the imagination otherwise than under the condition of a possible
synthetic unity of this apprehension, it would also be a pure accident
that phenomena were adapted to a connected system of human knowledge.
For although we should have the power of associating perceptions, it
would still remain wholly undetermined and accidental whether they
were associable; and in the event of their not being so, a multitude
of perceptions and even perhaps a whole sensibility would be possible,
in which much empirical consciousness would be met with in my mind,
but divided and without belonging to _one_ consciousness of myself,
which however is impossible. For only in that I ascribe all
perceptions to one consciousness (the original apperception) can I say
of all of them that I am conscious of them. There must therefore be an
objective ground, i. e. a ground to be recognized _a priori_ before
all empirical laws of the imagination, on which rests the possibility,
nay even the necessity, of a law which extends throughout all
phenomena, according to which we regard them without exception as such
data of the senses, as are in themselves associable and subjected to
universal rules of a thorough-going connexion in reproduction. This
objective ground of all association of phenomena I call the _affinity_
of phenomena. But we can meet this nowhere else than in the principle
of the unity of apperception as regards all cognitions which are to
belong to me. According to it, all phenomena without exception must so
enter into the mind or be apprehended as to agree with the unity of
apperception, which agreement would be impossible without synthetical
unity in their connexion, which therefore is also objectively
necessary."

"The objective unity of all (empirical) consciousness in one
consciousness (the original apperception) is therefore the necessary
condition even of all possible perception, and the affinity of all
phenomena (near or remote) is a necessary consequence of a synthesis
in the imagination, which is _a priori_ founded upon rules."

"The imagination is therefore also a power of _a priori_ synthesis,
for which reason we give it the name of the productive imagination;
and so far as it, in relation to all the manifold of the phenomenon,
has no further aim than the necessary unity in the synthesis of the
phenomenon, it can be