252. To take from ideas their objective value, to reduce them to mere subjective phenomena, to resist that internal necessity which obliges us to admit the correspondence of the soul to objects, is to destroy the very consciousness of the soul. This must have been seen, and this we think we can most evidently demonstrate.
253. We have consciousness of ourselves. We now abstract what we feel, what we are; but we know that we feel and that we are. This experience is so clear, so vivid, that we cannot resist the truth of what it attests to us. But this me is not only the me of the present instant, it is also the me of yesterday, and of all prior time of which we have consciousness. We are the same that we were yesterday, the being in which this succession is verified, to which this variety of appearances is presented. The consciousness of the me then includes the identity of a being at distinct times, in various situations, with different ideas, and diverse affections—the identity of a being which endures and is the same throughout the changes succeeding in it. If this duration of identity be broken, if I be not sure that I am the same me that I was previously, the consciousness of the me is destroyed. There would exist a series of unconnected facts, isolated acts of consciousness, but not that intimate consciousness I now experience. This cannot be doubted; every man feels it in himself; it admits neither discussion nor proof in any one, it requires them of no one. The moment this consciousness of identity fails, we are in our own eyes annihilated; whatever we may be in reality, for ourselves we are nothing. What is the consciousness of a being, formed from a series of acts of consciousness, without connection or mutual relation? It is a being revealed successively to itself, yet not as itself, but as a new being, a being which is born and dies, and dies and is born before its eyes, without its knowing that what is born is what died, or that what died is what was born: it is a light which burns and is extinguished, and again burns and is again extinguished, without its knowing that it is the same light.
254. This consciousness is completely destroyed by those who deny the connection between the idea and object.
Demonstration.—In the instant A, I have no other subjective presence of my acts than the very act I am at that moment performing: I cannot therefore be certain that I have had any previously, if they be not represented in the present idea; there is therefore a connection between this idea and its object. Attending then simply to the phenomena of consciousness, to the mere consciousness of the subject, we find that we do, by an irresistible necessity, attribute an objective value to ideas, an objective truth to judgments.
255. Without this objective truth, all certain recollection even of internal phenomena, and by a legitimate consequence, all reasoning, judgment, and thought, are impossible.
Recollection is of past acts. When we recollect them, they already are not; for, if they were, we should not have recollection, but present consciousness of them. Even when in the act of recollecting them we have other similar acts, these are not the same, for something of past time always enters into the idea of recollection. Therefore, we can have no certainty of them, but by their connection with the present act, their correspondence with the idea presenting them to us.
256. We have said that if, in internal phenomena, the certainty of the objective truth fail, all reasoning is impossible. In fact, all reasoning supposes a succession of acts; when one of them exists in the mind, the other does not exist; therefore, continued minute recollections are required, lest the chain be broken; and thus, without this chain, there is no reasoning; without recollection this chain is not; without objective truth, there is no certain recollection; therefore, without objective truth there is no reasoning.
257. All judgments also seem impossible. Judgments are of two classes: some require demonstration, others do not. Those that require demonstration would be impossible, for there can be no demonstration without reasoning, and reasoning in this case is impossible. As to those that do not need demonstration, because they shine with immediate evidence; all of them, not relating to the present act of the soul, in the very instant when the judgment is pronounced, would be impossible. Therefore, there could be no judgment but that of the present act, that is, the consciousness of the present without relation to the preceding. But it is remarkable that even with respect to the acts of consciousness, this judgment would be little less than impossible; for when we form a judgment upon an act of consciousness, this we do not by this act, but by a reflex act. This reflection requires succession, and succession cannot be known with certainty if there be no objective truth.
It is even very doubtful if the judgments of immediate evidence would be possible. They suppose, as we explained in the preceding chapter, relation of the partial conceptions into which the whole is decomposed; and how can there be decomposition without succession? If there is succession, there is recollection; if there is recollection, there is no immediate presence of the thing recollected.
258. Such consequences are astounding, but they are inevitable. If we destroy objective truth, all rational thought disappears. Such thought includes a certain continuity of acts corresponding to different instants; if this continuity be broken, the human thought ceases to be what it is, ceases to exist as reason. It is a series of acts which have no sort of connection, and which lead to nothing. In such a case, all expression, all words fail; nothing has a fixed value; every thing is ingulfed in obscurity. Thus it is in the intellectual and moral order as in the material; and man has not even the comfort of possessing himself; he vanishes from himself like an empty shadow.
259. Sensations may also exist as an unconnected series, but there will be no certain recollection of them, since the objective truth is wanting; past sensations exist only as past, and, consequently, as simple objects. All intellectual reflection upon them will be impossible, for reflection is not sensation; sensation is an object of reflection, not reflection itself. Thus, the ignorant man has the same sensation as the philosopher, but not the same reflection upon it. A thousand times we have sensations without reflecting that we have them. Sensible is very different from intellectual consciousness; the former is the simple presence of the sensation, or the sensation itself; the latter is the act of the intellect occupied with the sensation.
260. This distinction is also found in all purely intellectual acts: the reflection upon the act is not the act itself. One is the object of the other; they are not identical, and are often found separated. If, then, there were no objective truth, reflection would be impossible.
261. It is likewise difficult to comprehend how any act of the consciousness of the me, even as present, can be possible. We have already seen the me disappear when the series of recollections is broken, and without objective truth it is not even possible to conceive the me for one instant. The me thinking knows the me thought only as object. Whether it perceive or know it, to account to itself for itself, it must reflect upon itself, and take itself for its own object; and there being no objective truth, it is inconceivable how an object can have any value.
It follows from this, that they who oppose objectiveness, attack a fundamental law of our mind, destroy thought, even consciousness, and every thing subjective which could serve as its basis.
262. In their arguments against objective certainty, its opponents are accustomed to depend upon the errors into which it leads us. The madman believes he sees objects, which do not exist; the lunatic believes firmly in his disconnected thoughts; and why may not that which deceives us in one instance, also deceive us in another, and all cases? Can that be a certain criterion which sometimes fails? Why not stop with the purely subjective? The madman, the lunatic, are deceived in the object, not in the subject; although what they think is not true, it is still very true and certain that they think it.
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