Note 17 — Chapter IX

On this interpretation 'entering the mind' or 'being apprehended' in the fourth paragraph does not refer merely to the apprehension of elements one by one, which is preliminary to the act of combining them, but includes the act by which they are combined. If so, Kant's argument formally involves a circle. For in the second and third paragraphs he argues that the synthesis of perceptions involves reproduction according to rules, and then, in the fourth paragraph, he argues that this reproduction presupposes a synthesis of perceptions. We may, however, perhaps regard his argument as being in substance that knowledge involves reproduction by the imagination of elements capable of connexion, and that this reproduction involves production by the imagination of the data of sense, which are to be reproduced, into an image.