tion of the
understanding, is _number_, a representation which comprises the
successive addition of one to one (homogeneous elements). Accordingly,
number is nothing else than the unity of the synthesis of the manifold
of a homogeneous perception in general, in that I generate time itself
in the apprehension of the perception."[11]

[11] B. 182, M. 110.

It is clear that this passage, whatever its precise interpretation may
be,[12] involves a confusion between the thought of counting and that
of number. The thought of number relates to objects of apprehension
and does not involve the thought of time. The thought of counting,
which presupposes the thought of number, relates to our apprehension
of objects and involves the thought of time; it is the thought of a
successive process on our part by which we count the number of units
contained in what we already know to consist of units.[13] Now we must
assume that the schema of quantity is really what Kant says it is,
viz. number, or to express it more accurately, the thought of number,
and not the thought of counting, with which he wrongly identifies it.
For his main problem is to find conceptions which at once are more
concrete than the categories and, at the same time, like the
categories, relate to objects, and the thought of counting, though
more concrete than that of number, does not relate to objects. Three
consequences follow. In the first place, although the schema of
quantity, i. e. the thought of number, is more concrete than the
thought of quantity,[14] it is not, as it should be, more concrete in
respect of time; for the thought of number does not include the
thought of time. Secondly, the thought of time is only introduced into
the schema of quantity irrelevantly by reference to the temporal
process of _counting_, by which we come to apprehend the number of a
given group of units. Thirdly, the schema of quantity is only in
appearance connected with the nature of a schema in general, as Kant
describes it, by a false identification of the thought of number with
the thought of the process on our part by which we count groups of
units, i. e. numbers.

[12] The drift of the passage would seem to be this: 'If we
are to present to ourselves an instance of a quantity, we
must successively combine similar units until they form a
quantity. This process involves the thought of a successive
process by which we add units according to the conceptio