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produce in intuition a priori any object on which, previous to all experience, their synthesis was founded. These concepts of pure understanding, therefore, not only excite suspicion with regard to the objective validity and the limits of their own application, but render even the concept of space equivocal, because of an inclination to apply it beyond the conditions of sensuous intuition, which was the very reason that made a transcendental deduction of it, such as we gave before, necessary. Before the reader has made a single step in the field of [74] pure reason, he must be convinced ofthe inevitable necessity of such a transcendental deduction, otherwise hewould walk on blindly and, after having strayed in every direction, he would only return to the same ignorance from which he started. He must at the same time perceive the inevitable difficulty of such a deduction, so that he may not complain about obscurity where the object itself is obscure, or weary too soon with our removal of obstacles, the fact being that we have [89] either to surrender altogether all claims to the knowledge of pure reason — the most favourite field of all philosophers, because extending beyond the limitsof all possible experience — or to bringthis critical investigation to perfection. It was easy to show before, when treating of the concepts of space and time, how these, though being knowledge a priori, refer necessarily to objects, and how they make a synthetical knowledge of them possible, which is independent of all experience. For, as no object can appear to us, that is, become an object of empirical intuition, except through such pure forms of sensibility, space and time are pure intuitions which contain a priori the conditions of the possibility of objects as phenomena, and the synthesis in these intuitions possesses objective validity. The categories of the understanding, on the contrary, are not conditions under which objects can be given in intuition, and it is quite possible therefore that objects should appear to us without any necessary reference to the functions of the understanding, thus showing that the understanding contains by no means any of their conditions a priori. There arises therefore here a difficulty, which we did not meet with in the field of sensibility, [75] namely, how subjective conditions of thought can have objective validity, that is, become conditions of the possibility of the knowledge of objects. It cannot be [90] denied that phenomena may be given in intuition without the functions of the understanding. For if we take, for instance, the concept of cause, which implies a peculiar kind of synthesis, consisting in placing according to a rule after something called A something totally different from it, B, we cannot say that it is a priori clear why phenomena should contain something of this kind. We cannot appeal for it to experience, because what has to be proved is the objective validity of this concept a priori. It would remain therefore a priori doubtful whether such a concept be not altogether empty, and without any corresponding object among phenomena. It is different with objects of sensuous intuition. Theymust conform to the formal conditions of sensibility existing a priori inthe mind, because otherwise they could in no way be objectsto us. But why besides this they should conform tothe conditions which the understanding requires for the synthetical unity of thought, does not seem to follow quite so easily. For we could quite well imagine that phenomena might possibly be such that the understanding should .