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The attention is the instrument of the one sort of normal mental activity called Apperception, and so impairment of the attention shows itself at once in some particular form of defect. Third, it is interesting to know that in progressive mental failure the loss of the powers of the mind takes place in an order which is the reverse of that of their original acquisition.
But this principle is not to be regarded as a principle for every possible understanding, but only for the understanding by means of whose pure apperception in the thought I am, no manifold content is given.
On the other hand, in the transcendental synthesis of the manifold content of representations, consequently in the synthetical unity of apperception, I am conscious of myself, not as I appear to myself, nor as I am in myself, but only that "I am." This representation is a thought, not an intuition.
Reference to an object is nothing other than the necessary unity of consciousness. The connective activity of the understanding, and with it experience, is possible only through "the synthetic unity of pure apperception," the "I think," which must be able to accompany all my representations, and through which they first become mine.
If the teacher, at the close of her description, could have the mental state of each child photographed on the blackboard of her schoolroom she would be in mental distress. In presenting such topics to children, much depends upon the previous content of their minds, upon the colors out of which they paint the pictures. We are now prepared for a more accurate definition of apperception.
They are merely rules for an understanding, whose whole power consists in thought, that is, in the act of submitting the synthesis of the manifold which is presented to it in intuition from a very different quarter, to the unity of apperception; a faculty, therefore, which cognizes nothing per se, but only connects and arranges the material of cognition, the intuition, namely, which must be presented to it by means of the object.
The second order of vision is a representation by ideograph, symbol or other indirect means, of events similar to those conveyed by direct vision. The visions of Ezekiel and John of Patmos are of the symbolic order, and although to the seers themselves there probably was a very clear apperception of their import, yet for others they require interpretation.
Representation has in Leibnitz a wider meaning than that usually associated with the word. The distinction, which has become of the first importance for psychology, between mere representation and conscious representation, or between perception and apperception, may be best explained by the example of the sound of the waves.
Synthetical unity of the manifold in intuitions, as given a priori, is therefore the foundation of the identity of apperception itself, which antecedes a priori all determinate thought.
But to show reasons for this peculiar character of our understandings, that it produces unity of apperception a priori only by means of categories, and a certain kind and number thereof, is as impossible as to explain why we are endowed with precisely so many functions of judgement and no more, or why time and space are the only forms of our intuition.
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