In this deduction of the categories, as Kant calls it, there appears for the first time an endeavour to connect together into one organic whole the several elements entering into experience. It is evident, however, that much was wanting before this essential task could be regarded as complete. Kant has certainly brought together self-consciousness, the system of the categories and data of sense. He has shown that the conditions of self-consciousness are the conditions of possible experience. But he has not shown, nor did he attempt to show, how it was that the conditions of self-consciousness are the very categories arrived at by consideration of the system of logical judgments. He does endeavour to show, but with small success, how the junction of category and data of sense is brought about, for according to his scheme these stood, to a certain extent at least, apart from and independent of one another. The failure to effect an organic combination of the several elements was the natural consequence of the false start which had been made.
The mode in which Kant endeavours to show how the several portions of cognition are subjectively realized brings into the clearest light the inconsistencies and imperfections of his doctrine. Sense had been assumed as furnishing the particular of knowledge, understanding as furnishing the universal; and it had been expressly declared that the particular was cognizable only in and through the universal. Still, each was conceived as somehow in itself complete and finished. Sense and understanding had distinct functions, and there was wanting some common term, some intermediary which should bring them into conjunction. Data of sense as purely particular could have nothing in common with the categories as purely universal. But data of sense had at least one universal aspect,--their aspect as the particular of the general forms, space and time. Categories were in themselves abstract and valueless, serviceable only when restricted to possible objects of experience. There was thus a common ground on which category and intuition were united in one, and an intermediate process whereby the universal of the category might be so far individualized as to comprehend the particular of sense. This intermediate process--which is really the junction of understanding and sense--Kant calls productive imagination, and it is only through productive imagination that knowledge or experience is actually realized in our subjective consciousness. The specific forms of productive imagination are called _schemata_, and upon the nature of the schema Kant gives much that has proved of extreme value for subsequent thought.