a thing in itself; that in this way, because I am present in consciousness always as a subject, am indeed as a singular subject, identical in all the manifoldness of representation, and distinguishing myself from this manifoldness as external to it, the illegitimate inference is thereby drawn that I am a substance, and a qualitatively simple being on top of that, and a one, and a being that concretely exists independently of the things of space and time.