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.