Among the German rationalist philosophers who continued to circulate, refine, and redefine the term in the eighteenth century, Christian Wolff stands out as particularly significant for Kant's interest in subreption.
Wolff defines the vitium subreptionis as a confusion of 'knowing' (erkennen) with 'experiencing' (erfahren), which we commit whenever we think ourselves to be experiencing something that is merely a product of the intellect.
This was the main meaning attached to the term as it was adopted into general scholarly usage in Germany by the middle of the eighteenth century.
In the same dissertation, an example of subreption for Kant is the axiom "every actual multiplicity can be given numerically, and thus every magnitude is finite"; Kant considers this axiom to be subreptive because the concept of time is introduced surreptitiously as the "means for giving form to the concept of the predicate".
[6] In Scots law, subreption is "the obtainment of a dispensation or gift by concealment of the truth".