But if our sensible representations would, in themselves, present a simple, partless, Parmenidean object beyond time and space, how is it that they in fact seem to represent distinct things in our awareness? At first glance Herbart would seem to be presenting the Kantian picture of a chaotic sensible manifold, upon which a spontaneous Understanding could work its synthetic operations. But in keeping with his anti-faculty position, Herbart argues instead for a kind of “passive synthesis” avant la lettre (SW VI: 116), by which certain representations are connected and collected into separate unities, but spontaneously, motivated solely from within, in accordance with the laws of psycho-mechanics and psycho-statics (cf.  esp. SW VI: 114, ff.).