It is not worth while to go into all the difficulties of this confused and artificial passage. Three points are clear upon the surface. In the first place, the account of the understanding now given differs from that given earlier in the _Critique_[12] in that, instead of merely distinguishing, it separates the sensibility and the understanding, and treats them as contributing, not two inseparable factors involved in all knowledge, but two kinds of knowledge. In the second place, the guise of argument is very thin, and while Kant ostensibly _proves_, he really only _asserts_ that the understanding is the faculty of judgement. In the third place, in describing judgement Kant is hampered by trying to oppose it as the mediate knowledge of an object to perception as the immediate knowledge of an object. A perception is said to relate immediately to an object; in contrast with this, a conception is said to relate immediately only to another conception or to a perception, and mediately to an object through relation to a perception, either directly or through another conception. Hence a judgement, as being the use of a conception, viz. the predicate of the judgement, is said to be the mediate knowledge of an object. But if this distinction be examined, it will be found that two kinds of immediate relation are involved, and that the account of perception is not really compatible with that of judgement. When a perception is said to relate immediately to an object, the relation in question is that between a sensation or appearance produced by an object acting upon or affecting the sensibility and the object which produces it. But when a conception is said to relate immediately to another conception or to a perception, the relation in question is that of universal and particular, i. e. that of genus and species or of universal and individual. For the conception is said to be 'valid for' (i. e. to 'apply to') and to 'comprehend' the conception or perception to which it is immediately related; and again, when a conception is said to relate mediately to an object, the relation meant is its 'application' to the object, even though in this case the application is indirect. Now if a perception to which a conception is related--either directly or indirectly through another conception--were an appearance produced by an object, the conception could never be related to the object in the sense required, viz. that it applies to it; for an appearance does not _apply to_ but is _produced_ by the object. Consequently, when Kant is considering a conception, and therefore also when he is considering a judgement, which is the use of a conception, he is really thinking of the perception to which it is related as an _object of_ perception, i. e. as a perceived individual, and he has ceased to think of a perception as an appearance produced by an object.[13] Hence in considering Kant's account of a conception and of judgement, we should ignore his account of perception, and therefore also his statement that judgement is the mediate knowledge of an object.