We may defy all the philosophers in the world to reason upon any fact whatever without the aid of ideal truth. We shall find in all facts the same sterility as in the fact of consciousness. This is no conjecture, but a rigid demonstration. Only one existence contains the reason of all other existences; if, then, we do not immediately and intuitively know it, we cannot discover any one real truth, origin of all others. 69. Even supposing there to be in the order of creation a fact of such a nature, that the whole universe is only a simple development of it, we should not therefore have found the real truth source of all science, for it would not enable us to make any advance towards the world of possibility, the ideal order, infinitely superior to that of finite existences. If we suppose the progress of natural science to lead to the discovery of a single, simple law, which presides over the development of all others, and the application of which, varied according to circumstances, is a sufficient reason of all the phenomena now referred to many and very complicated laws; this would, without doubt, be an immense progress in sciences the object of which is the visible world; but what would it give us to know of the world of intelligences? What of the world of possibility?(6) CHAPTER VII. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ME CANNOT PRODUCE TRANSCENDENTAL SCIENCE. 70. The testimony of consciousness is sure and irresistible, but it has no connection with that of evidence. The object of the one is a particular and contingent fact; that of the other, a necessary truth. That I now think, is to me absolutely certain; but this thought of mine is not a necessary but a decidedly contingent truth; for I might never have thought, or even existed: it is a purely individual fact, is confined to me, and its existence or non-existence in nowise affects universal truths. Consciousness is an anchor, not a beacon: it saves the understanding from shipwreck, but does not light it on its way; in the assaults of universal doubt, consciousness is at hand to shield it from destruction; but if asked to direct us, it gives us only particular facts. These facts have no scientific value, except when made objective, or rather, when the mind, reflecting upon them, bathes them in the light of necessary truths. We think, we feel, we are free; these are facts; but of themselves they are barren. If we would fecundate them, we must take them as a kind of material of universal truths. Thought becomes immovable, it congeals, if deprived of the impulse of these ideas; sensation is common to us and the brutes; and liberty, without combination of motives presented by reason, has no object, no life.