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.