[64] This is an indisputable case of the use of representation in the sense of something represented or presented.
[65] I. e. consciousness of our identity is final; we cannot, for instance, go further back to a consciousness of the consciousness of our identity.
[5.] "That is to say, this thorough-going identity of the apperception of a manifold given in perception contains a synthesis of representations,[66] and is possible only through the consciousness of this synthesis.[67] [6.] For the empirical consciousness which accompanies different representations is in itself fragmentary, and without relation to the identity of the subject. [7.] This relation, therefore, takes place not by my merely accompanying every representation with consciousness, but by my _adding_ one representation to another, and being conscious of the synthesis of them. [8.] Consequently, only because I can connect a manifold of given representations _in one consciousness_, is it possible for me to represent to myself the _identity of consciousness in these representations_; i. e. the _analytical_ unity of apperception is possible only under the presupposition of a _synthetical_ unity. [9.] The thought, 'These representations given in perception belong all of them to me' is accordingly just the same as, 'I unite them in one self-consciousness, or at least can so unite them;' [10.] and although this thought is not itself as yet the consciousness of the _synthesis_ of representations, it nevertheless presupposes the possibility of this synthesis; that is to say, it is only because I can comprehend the manifold of representations in one consciousness, that I call them all _my_ representations; for otherwise I should have as many-coloured and varied a self as I have representations of which I am conscious. [11.] Synthetical unity of the manifold of perceptions, as given _a priori_, is therefore the ground of the identity of apperception itself, which precedes _a priori_ all _my_ determinate thinking. [12.] But connexion does not lie in the objects, nor can it be borrowed from them through perception and thereby first taken up into the understanding, but it is always an operation of the understanding which itself is nothing more than the faculty of connecting _a priori_, and of bringing the manifold of given representations under the unity of apperception, which principle is the highest in all human knowledge."