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Of Identity and Diversity By John Locke From Book II Chapter XXVII of An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding 1. Wherein identity
consists. Another occasion the mind often takes of comparing, is the very
being of things, when, considering anything as existing at any determined
time and place, we compare it with itself existing at another time, and
thereon form the ideas of identity and diversity. When we see anything to be
in any place in any instant of time, we are sure (be it what it will) that it
is that very thing, and not another which at 2. Identity of
substances. We have the ideas but of three sorts of substances: 1. God. 2.
Finite intelligences. 3. Bodies. First, God is without
beginning, eternal, unalterable, and everywhere, and therefore concerning his
identity there can be no doubt. Secondly, Finite spirits
having had each its determinate time and place of beginning to exist, the
relation to that time and place will always determine to each of them its
identity, as long as it exists. Thirdly, The same will
hold of every particle of matter, to which no addition or subtraction of
matter being made, it is the same. For, though these three sorts of
substances, as we term them, do not exclude one another out of the same
place, yet we cannot conceive but that they must necessarily each of them
exclude any of the same kind out of the same place: or else the notions and
names of identity and diversity would be in vain, and there could be no such
distinctions of substances, or anything else one from another. For example:
could two bodies be in the same place at the same time; then those two
parcels of matter must be one and the same, take them great or little; nay,
all bodies must be one and the same. For, by the same reason that two
particles of matter may be in one place, all bodies may be in one place:
which, when it can be supposed, takes away the distinction of identity and
diversity of one and more, and renders it ridiculous. But it being a
contradiction that two or more should be one, identity and diversity are
relations and ways of comparing well founded, and of use to the
understanding. Identity of modes and
relations. All other things being but modes or relations ultimately
terminated in substances, the identity and diversity of each particular
existence of them too will be by the same way determined: only as to things
whose existence is in succession, such as are the actions of finite beings,
v.g. motion and thought, both which consist in a continued train of
succession, concerning their diversity there can be no question: because each
perishing the moment it begins, they cannot exist in different times, or in
different places, as permanent beings can at different times exist in distant
places; and therefore no motion or thought, considered as at different times,
can be the same, each part thereof having a different beginning of existence. 3. Principium
Individuationis. From what has been said, it is easy to discover what is
so much inquired after, the principium individuationis; and that, it
is plain, is existence itself; which determines a being of any sort to a
particular time and place, incommunicable to two beings of the same kind.
This, though it seems easier to conceive in simple substances or modes; yet,
when reflected on, is not more difficult in compound ones, if care be taken
to what it is applied: v.g. let us suppose an atom, i.e., a continued body
under one immutable superficies, existing in a determined time and place; it
is evident, that, considered in any instant of its existence, it is in that
instant the same with itself. For, being at that instant what it is, and
nothing else, it is the same, and so must continue as long as its existence
is continued; for so long it will be the same, and no other. In like manner,
if two or more atoms be joined together into the same mass, every one of
those atoms will be the same, by the foregoing rule: and whilst they exist
united together, the mass, consisting of the same atoms, must be the same
mass, or the same body, let the parts be ever so differently jumbled. But if
one of these atoms be taken away, or one new one added, it is no longer the
same mass or the same body. In the state of living creatures, their identity
depends not on a mass of the same particles, but on something else. For in
them the variation of great parcels of matter alters not the identity: an oak
growing from a plant to a great tree, and then lopped, is still the same oak;
and a colt grown up to a horse, sometimes fat, sometimes lean, is all the
while the same horse: though, in both these cases, there may be a manifest
change of the parts; so that truly they are not either of them the same
masses of matter, though they be truly one of them the same oak, and the
other the same horse. The reason whereof is, that, in these two cases--a mass
of matter and a living body--identity is not applied to the same thing. 4. Identity of
vegetables. We must therefore consider wherein an oak differs from a mass of
matter, and that seems to me to be in this, that the one is only the cohesion
of particles of matter any how united, the other such a disposition of them
as constitutes the parts of an oak; and such an organization of those parts
as is fit to receive and distribute nourishment, so as to continue and frame
the wood, bark, and leaves, etc., of an oak, in which consists the vegetable
life. That being then one plant which has such an organization of parts in
one coherent body, partaking of one common life, it continues to be the same
plant as long as it partakes of the same life, though that life be
communicated to new particles of matter vitally united to the living plant,
in a like continued organization conformable to that sort of plants. For this
organization, being at any one instant in any one collection of matter, is in
that particular concrete distinguished from all other, and is that individual
life, which existing constantly from that moment both forwards and backwards,
in the same continuity of insensibly succeeding parts united to the living
body of the plant, it has that identity which makes the same plant, and all
the parts of it, parts of the same plant, during all the time that they exist
united in that continued organization, which is fit to convey that common
life to all the parts so united. 5. Identity of animals.
The case is not so much different in brutes but that any one may hence see
what makes an animal and continues it the same. Something we have like this
in machines, and may serve to illustrate it. For example, what is a watch? It
is plain it is nothing but a fit organization or construction of parts to a
certain end, which, when a sufficient force is added to it, it is capable to
attain. If we would suppose this machine one continued body, all whose
organized parts were repaired, increased, or diminished by a constant
addition or separation of insensible parts, with one common life, we should
have something very much like the body of an animal; with this difference,
That, in an animal the fitness of the organization, and the motion wherein
life consists, begin together, the motion coming from within; but in machines
the force coming sensibly from without, is often away when the organ is in
order, and well fitted to receive it. 6. The identity of man.
This also shows wherein the identity of the same man consists; viz., in
nothing but a participation of the same continued life, by constantly
fleeting particles of matter, in succession vitally united to the same
organized body. He that shall place the identity of man in anything else, but,
like that of other animals, in one fitly organized body, taken in any one
instant, and from thence continued, under one organization of life, in
several successively fleeting particles of matter united to it, will find it
hard to make an embryo, one of years, mad and sober, the same man, by any
supposition, that will not make it possible for Seth, Ishmael, Socrates,
Pilate, St. Austin, and Caesar Borgia, to be the same man. For if the
identity of soul alone makes the same man; and there be nothing in the nature
of matter why the same individual spirit may not be united to different
bodies, it will be possible that those men, living in distant ages, and of
different tempers, may have been the same man: which way of speaking must be
from a very strange use of the word man, applied to an idea out of which body
and shape are excluded. And that way of speaking would agree yet worse with
the notions of those philosophers who allow of transmigration, and are of
opinion that the souls of men may, for their miscarriages, be detruded into
the bodies of beasts, as fit habitations, with organs suited to the
satisfaction of their brutal inclinations. But yet I think nobody, could he
be sure that the soul of Heliogabalus were in one of his hogs, would yet say
that hog were a man or Heliogabalus. 7. Idea of identity
suited to the idea it is applied to. It is not therefore unity of substance
that comprehends all sorts of identity, or will determine it in every case;
but to conceive and judge of it aright, we must consider what idea the word
it is applied to stands for: it being one thing to be the same substance,
another the same man, and a third the same person, if person, man, and
substance, are three names standing for three different ideas;--for such as
is the idea belonging to that name, such must be the identity; which, if it
had been a little more carefully attended to, would possibly have prevented a
great deal of that confusion which often occurs about this matter, with no
small seeming difficulties, especially concerning personal identity, which
therefore we shall in the next place a little consider. 8. Same man. An animal is
a living organized body; and consequently the same animal, as we have
observed, is the same continued life communicated to different particles of
matter, as they happen successively to be united to that organized living
body. And whatever is talked of other definitions, ingenious observation puts
it past doubt, that the idea in our minds, of which the sound man in our
mouths is the sign, is nothing else but of an animal of such a certain form.
Since I think I may be confident, that, whoever should see a creature of his
own shape or make, though it had no more reason all its life than a cat or a
parrot, would call him still a man; or whoever should hear a cat or a parrot
discourse, reason, and philosophize, would call or think it nothing but a cat
or a parrot; and say, the one was a dull irrational man, and the other a very
intelligent rational parrot. A relation we have in an author of great note,
is sufficient to countenance the supposition of a rational parrot. His words are: "I
had a mind to know, from Prince Maurice's own mouth, the account of a common,
but much credited story, that I had heard so often from many others, of an
old parrot he had in Brazil, during his government there, that spoke, and
asked, and answered common questions, like a reasonable creature: so that
those of his train there generally concluded it to be witchery or possession;
and one of his chaplains, who lived long afterwards in Holland, would never
from that time endure a parrot, but said they all had a devil in them. I had
heard many particulars of this story, and as severed by people hard to be
discredited, which made me ask Prince Maurice what there was of it. He said,
with his usual plainness and dryness in talk, there was something true, but a
great deal false of what had been reported. I desired to know of him what
there was of the first. He told me short and coldly, that he had heard of
such an old parrot when he had been at Brazil; and though he believed nothing
of it, and it was a good way off, yet he had so much curiosity as to send for
it: that it was a very great and a very old one; and when it came first into
the room where the prince was, with a great many Dutchmen about him, it said
presently, What a company of white men are here! They asked it, what it
thought that man was, pointing to the prince. It answered, Some General or
other. When they brought it close to him, he asked it, D'ou venez-vous? It answered,
De Marinnan. The Prince, A qui estes-vous? The Parrot, A un Portugais. The
Prince, Que fais-tu la? Parrot, Je garde les poulles. The Prince laughed, and
said, Vous gardez les poulles? The Parrot answered, Oui, moi; et je scai bien
faire; and made the chuck four or five times that people use to make to
chickens when they call them. I set down the words of this worthy dialogue in
French, just as Prince Maurice said them to me. I asked him in what language
the parrot spoke, and he said in Brazilian. I asked whether he understood
Brazilian; he said No, but he had taken care to have two interpreters by him,
the one a Dutchman that spoke Brazilian, and the other a Brazilian that spoke
Dutch; that he asked them separately and privately, and both of them agreed
in telling him just the same thing that the parrot had said. I could not but
tell this odd story, because it is so much out of the way, and from the first
hand, and what may pass for a good one; for I dare say this Prince at least
believed himself in all he told me, having ever passed for a very honest and
pious man: I leave it to naturalists to reason, and to other men to believe,
as they please upon it; however, it is not, perhaps, amiss to relieve or
enliven a busy scene sometimes with such digressions, whether to the purpose
or no." I have taken care that
the reader should have the story at large in the author's own words, because
he seems to me not to have thought it incredible; for it cannot be imagined
that so able a man as he, who had sufficiency enough to warrant all the
testimonies he gives of himself, should take so much pains, in a place where
it had 9. Personal identity.
This being premised, to find wherein personal identity consists, we must
consider what person stands for;--which, I think, is a thinking intelligent
being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the
same thinking thing, in different times and places; which it does only by
that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to
me, essential to it: it being impossible for any one to perceive without
perceiving that he does perceive. When we see, hear, smell, taste, feel,
meditate, or will anything, we know that we do so. Thus it is always as to
our present sensations and perceptions: and by this every one is to himself
that which he calls self:--it not being considered, in this case, whether the
same self be continued in the same or divers substances. For, since
consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that which makes every
one to be what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all
other thinking things, in this alone consists personal identity, i.e., the
sameness of a rational being: and as far as this consciousness can be
extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity
of that person; it is the same self now it was then; and it is by the same
self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was
done. 10. Consciousness makes
personal identity. But it is further inquired, whether it be the same
identical substance. This few would think they had reason to doubt of, if
these perceptions, with their consciousness, always remained present in the
mind, whereby the same thinking thing would be always consciously present,
and, as would be thought, evidently the same to itself. But that which seems
to make the difficulty is this, that this consciousness being interrupted
always by forgetfulness, there being no moment of our lives wherein we have
the whole train of all our past actions before our eyes in one view, but even
the best memories losing the sight of one part whilst they are viewing
another; and we sometimes, and that the greatest part of our lives, not reflecting
on our past selves, being intent on our present thoughts, and in sound sleep
having no thoughts at all, or at least none with that consciousness which
remarks our waking thoughts,--I say, in all these cases, our consciousness
being interrupted, and we losing the sight of our past selves, doubts are
raised whether we are the same thinking thing, i.e., the same substance or
no. Which, however reasonable or unreasonable, concerns not personal identity
at all. The question being what makes the same person; and not whether it be
the same identical substance, which always thinks in the same person, which,
in this case, matters not at all: different substances, by the same
consciousness (where they do partake in it) being united into one person, as
well as different bodies by the same life are united into one animal, whose
identity is preserved in that change of substances by the unity of one
continued life. For, it being the same consciousness that makes a man be
himself to himself, personal identity depends on that only, whether it be
annexed solely to one individual substance, or can be continued in a
succession of several substances. For as far as any intelligent being can
repeat the idea of any past action with the same consciousness it had of it
at first, and with the same consciousness it has of any present action; so
far it is the same personal self For it is by the consciousness it has of its
present thoughts and actions, that it is self to itself now, and so will be
the same self, as far as the same consciousness can extend to actions past or
to come. and would be by distance of time, or change of substance, no more
two persons, than a man be two men by wearing other clothes to-day than he
did yesterday, with a long or a short sleep between: the same consciousness
uniting those distant actions into the same person, whatever substances
contributed to their production. 11. Personal identity in
change of substance. That this is so, we have some kind of evidence in our
very bodies, all whose particles, whilst vitally united to this same thinking
conscious self, so that we feel when they are touched, and are affected by,
and conscious of good or harm that happens to them, as a part of ourselves;
i.e., of our thinking conscious self. Thus, the limbs of his body are to
every one a part of Himself; he sympathizes and is concerned for them. Cut
off a hand, and thereby separate it from that consciousness he had of its
heat, cold, and other affections, and it is then no longer a part of that
which is himself, any more than the remotest part of matter. Thus, we see the
substance whereof personal self consisted at one time may be varied at
another, without the change of personal identity; there being no question
about the same person, though the limbs which but now were a part of it, be
cut off. 12. Personality in change
of substance. But the question is, Whether if the same substance which thinks
be changed, it can be the same person; or, remaining the same, it can be
different persons? And to this I answer: First,
This can be no question at all to those who place thought in a purely
material animal constitution, void of an immaterial substance. For, whether
their supposition be true or no, it is plain they conceive personal identity
preserved in something else than identity of substance; as animal identity is
preserved in identity of life, and not of substance. And therefore those who
place thinking in an immaterial substance only, before they can come to deal
with these men, must show why personal identity cannot be preserved in the
change of immaterial substances, or variety of particular immaterial
substances, as well as animal identity is preserved in the change of material
substances, or variety of particular bodies: unless they will say, it is one
immaterial spirit that makes the same life in brutes, as it is one immaterial
spirit that makes the same person in men; which the Cartesians at least will
not admit, for fear of making brutes thinking things too. 13. Whether in change of
thinking substances there can be one person. But next, as to the first part
of the question, Whether, if the same thinking substance (supposing
immaterial substances only to think) be changed, it can be the same person? I
answer, that cannot be resolved but by those who know what kind of substances
they are that do think; and whether the consciousness of past actions can be
transferred from one thinking substance to another. I grant were the same
consciousness the same individual action it could not: but it being a present
representation of a past action, why it may not be possible, that that may be
represented to the mind to have been which really never was, will remain to
be shown. And therefore how far the consciousness of past actions is annexed
to any individual agent, so that another cannot possibly have it, will be
hard for us to determine, till we know what kind of action it is that cannot
be done without a reflex act of perception accompanying it, and how performed
by thinking substances, who cannot think without being conscious of it. But
that which we call the same consciousness, not being the same individual act,
why one intellectual substance may not have represented to it, as done by
itself, what it never did, and was perhaps done by some other agent--why, I
say, such a representation may not possibly be without reality of matter of
fact, as well as several representations in dreams are, which yet whilst
dreaming we take for true--will be difficult to conclude from the nature of
things. And that it never is so, will by us, till we have clearer views of
the nature of thinking substances, be best resolved into the goodness of God;
who, as far as the happiness or misery of any of his sensible creatures is
concerned in it, will not, by a fatal error of theirs, transfer from one to
another that consciousness which draws reward or punishment with it. How far
this may be an argument against those who would place thinking in a system of
fleeting animal spirits, I leave to be considered. But yet, to return to the
question before us, it must be allowed, that, if the same consciousness
(which, as has been shown, is quite a different thing from the same numerical
figure or motion in body) can be transferred from one thinking substance to
another, it will be possible that two thinking substances may make but one
person. For the same consciousness being preserved, whether in the same or
different substances, the personal identity is preserved. 14. Whether, the same
immaterial substance remaining, there can be two persons. As to the second
part of the question, Whether the same immaterial substance remaining, there
may be two distinct persons; which question seems to me to be built on
this,--Whether the same immaterial being, being conscious of the action of
its past duration, may be wholly stripped of all the consciousness of its
past existence, and lose it 15. The body, as well as
the soul, goes to the making of a man. And thus may we be able, without any
difficulty, to conceive the same person at the resurrection, though in a body
not exactly in make or parts the same which he had here,--the same
consciousness going along with the soul that inhabits it. But yet the soul
alone, in the change of bodies, would scarce to any one but to him that makes
the soul the man, be enough to make the same man. For should the soul of a
prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the prince's past life, enter
and inform the body of a cobbler, as soon as deserted by his own soul, every
one sees he would be the same person with the prince, accountable only for
the prince's actions: but who would say it was the same man? The body too
goes to the making the man, and would, I guess, to everybody determine the
man in this case, wherein the soul, with all its princely thoughts about it,
would not make another man: but he would be the same cobbler to every one
besides himself. I know that, in the ordinary way of speaking, the same
person, and the same man, stand for one and the same thing. And indeed every
one will always have a liberty to speak as he pleases, and to apply what
articulate sounds to what ideas he thinks fit, and change them as often as he
pleases. But yet, when we will inquire what makes the same spirit, man, or
person, we must fix the ideas of spirit, man, or person in our minds; and
having resolved with ourselves what we mean by them, it will not be hard to
determine, in either of them, or the like, when it is the same, and when not. 16. Consciousness alone
unites actions into the same person. But though the same immaterial substance
or soul does not alone, wherever it be, and in whatsoever state, make the
same man; yet it is plain, consciousness, as far as ever it can be
extended--should it be to ages past--unites existences and actions very
remote in time into the same person, as well as it does the existences and
actions of the immediately preceding moment: so that whatever has the
consciousness of present and past actions, is the same person to whom they
both belong. Had I the same consciousness that I saw the ark and Noah's
flood, as that I saw an overflowing of the Thames last winter, or as that I
write now, I could no more doubt that I who write this now, that saw' the
Thames overflowed last winter, and that viewed the flood at the general
deluge, was the same self,--place that self in what substance you
please--than that I who write this am the same myself now whilst I write
(whether I consist of all the same substance, material or immaterial, or no)
that I was yesterday. For as to this point of being the same self, it matters
not whether this present self be made up of the same or other substances--I
being as much concerned, and as justly accountable for any action that was
done a thousand years since, appropriated to me now by this
self-consciousness, as I am for what I did the last moment. 17. Self depends on
consciousness, not on substance. Self is that conscious thinking
thing,--whatever substance made up of, (whether spiritual or material, simple
or compounded, it matters not)--which is sensible or conscious of pleasure
and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for itself, as
far as that consciousness extends. Thus every one finds that, whilst
comprehended under that consciousness, the little finger is as much a part of
himself as what is most so. Upon separation of this little finger, should
this consciousness go along with the little finger, and leave the rest of the
body, it is evident the little finger would be the person, the same person;
and self then would have nothing to do with the rest of the body. As in this
case it is the consciousness that goes along with the substance, when one
part is separate from another, which makes the same person, and constitutes
this inseparable self: so it is in reference to substances remote in time.
That with which the consciousness of this present thinking thing can join
itself, makes the same person, and is one self with it, and with nothing
else; and so attributes to itself, and owns all the actions of that thing, as
its own, as far as that consciousness reaches, and no further; as every one
who reflects will perceive. 18. Persons, not
substances, the objects of reward and punishment. In this personal identity
is founded all the right and justice of reward and punishment; happiness and
misery being that for which every one is concerned for himself, and not
mattering what becomes of any substance, not joined to, or affected with that
consciousness. For, as it is evident in the instance I gave but now, if the
consciousness went along with the little finger when it was cut off, that
would be the same self which was concerned for the whole body yesterday, as
making part of itself, whose actions then it cannot but admit as its own now.
Though, if the same body should still live, and immediately from the
separation of the little finger have its own peculiar consciousness, whereof
the little finger knew nothing, it would not at all be concerned for it, as a
part of itself, or could own any of its actions, or have any of them imputed
to him. 19. Which shows wherein
personal identity consists. This may show us wherein personal identity
consists: not in the identity of substance, but, as I have said, in the
identity of consciousness, wherein if Socrates and the present mayor of
Queinborough agree, they are the same person: if the same Socrates waking and
sleeping do not partake of the same consciousness, Socrates waking and
sleeping is not the same person. And to punish Socrates waking for what sleeping
Socrates thought, and waking Socrates was never conscious of, would be no
more of right, than to punish one twin for what his brother-twin did, whereof
he knew nothing, because their outsides were so like, that they could not be
distinguished; for such twins have been seen. 20. Absolute oblivion
separates what is thus forgotten from the person, but not from the man. But
yet possibly it will still be objected,--Suppose I wholly lose the memory of
some parts of my life, beyond a possibility of retrieving them, so that
perhaps I shall never be conscious of them again; yet am I not the same
person that did those actions, had those thoughts that I once was conscious
of, though I have now forgot them? To which I answer, that we must here take
notice what the word I is applied to; which, in this case, is the man only.
And the same man being presumed to be the same person, I is easily here
supposed to stand also for the same person. But if it be possible for the
same man to have distinct incommunicable consciousness at different times, it
is past doubt the same man would at different times make different persons;
which, we see, is the sense of mankind in the solemnest declaration of their
opinions, human laws not punishing the mad man for the sober man's actions,
nor the sober man for what the mad man did,--thereby making them two persons:
which is somewhat explained by our way of speaking in English when we say
such an one is "not himself," or is "beside himself"; in
which phrases it is insinuated, as if those who now, or at least first used
them, thought that self was changed; the selfsame person was no longer in
that man. 21. Difference between
identity of man and of person. But yet it is hard to conceive that Socrates,
the same individual man, should be two persons. To help us a little in this,
we must consider what is meant by Socrates, or the same individual man. First, it must be either
the same individual, immaterial, thinking substance; in short, the same
numerical soul, and nothing else. Secondly, or the same
animal, without any regard to an immaterial soul. Thirdly, or the same
immaterial spirit united to the same animal. Now, take which of these
suppositions you please, it is impossible to make personal identity to
consist in anything but consciousness; or reach any further than that does. For, by the first of
them, it must be allowed possible that a man born of different women, and in
distant times, may be the same man. A way of speaking which, whoever admits,
must allow it possible for the same man to be two distinct persons, as any
two that have lived in different ages without the knowledge of one another's
thoughts.
22. But is not a man
drunk and sober the same person? why else is he punished for the fact he
commits when drunk, though he be never afterwards conscious of it? Just as
much the same person as a man that walks, and does other things in his sleep,
is the same person, and is answerable for any mischief he shall do in it.
Human laws punish both, with a justice suitable to their way of
knowledge;--because, in these cases, they cannot distinguish certainly what
is real, what counterfeit: and so the ignorance in drunkenness or sleep is
not admitted as a plea. For, though punishment be annexed to personality, and
personality to consciousness, and the drunkard perhaps be not conscious of
what he did, yet human judicatures justly punish him; because the fact is
proved against him, but want of consciousness cannot be proved for him. But
in the Great Day, wherein the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open, it
may be reasonable to think, no one shall be made to answer for what he knows
nothing of, but shall receive his doom, his conscience accusing or excusing
him. 23. Consciousness alone
unites remote existences into one person. Nothing but consciousness can unite
remote existences into the same person: the identity of substance will not do
it; for whatever substance there is, however framed, without consciousness
there is no person: and a carcass may be a person, as well as any sort of
substance be so, without consciousness. Could we suppose two
distinct incommunicable consciousnesses acting the same body, the one
constantly by day, the other by night; and, on the other side, the same
consciousness, acting by intervals, two distinct bodies: I ask, in the first
case, whether the day and the night--man would not be two as distinct persons
as Socrates and Plato? And whether, in the second case, there would not be
one person in two distinct bodies, as much as one man is the same in two
distinct clothings? Nor is it at all material to say, that this same, and
this distinct consciousness, in the cases above mentioned, is owing to the
same and distinct immaterial substances, bringing it with them to those
bodies; which, whether true or no, alters not the case: since it is evident
the personal identity would equally be determined by the consciousness,
whether that consciousness were annexed to some individual immaterial
substance or no. For, granting that the thinking substance in man must be
necessarily supposed immaterial, it is evident that immaterial thinking thing
may sometimes part with its past consciousness, and be restored to it again:
as appears in the forgetfulness men often have of their past actions; and the
mind many times recovers the memory of a past consciousness, which it had
lost for twenty years together. Make these intervals of memory and
forgetfulness to take their turns regularly by day and night, and you have
two persons with the same immaterial spirit, as much as in the former
instance two persons with the same body. So that self is not determined by
identity or diversity of substance, which it cannot be sure of, but only by
identity of consciousness. 24. Not the substance
with which the consciousness may be united. Indeed it may conceive the
substance whereof it is now made up to have existed formerly, united in the
same conscious being: but, consciousness removed, that substance is no more
itself, or makes no more a part of it, than any other substance; as is
evident in the instance we have already given of a limb cut off, of whose
heat, or cold, or other affections, having no longer any consciousness, it is
no more of a man's self than any other matter of the universe. In like manner
it will be in reference to any immaterial substance, which is void of that
consciousness whereby I am myself to myself: if there be any part of its
existence which I cannot upon recollection join with that present
consciousness whereby I am now myself, it is, in that part of its existence,
no more myself than any other immaterial being. For, whatsoever any substance
has thought or done, which I cannot recollect, and by my consciousness make
my own thought and action, it will no more belong to me, whether a part of me
thought or did it, than if it had been thought or done by any other
immaterial being anywhere existing. 25. Consciousness unites
substances, material or spiritual, with the same personality. I agree, the
more probable opinion is, that this consciousness is annexed to, and the
affection of, one individual immaterial substance. But let men, according to
their diverse hypotheses, resolve of that as they please. This every
intelligent being, sensible of happiness or misery, must grant--that there is
something that is himself, that he is concerned for, and would have happy;
that this self has existed in a continued duration more than one instant, and
therefore it is possible may exist, as it has done, months and years to come,
without any certain bounds to be set to its duration; and may be the same
self, by the same consciousness continued on for the future. And thus, by
this consciousness he finds himself to be the same self which did such and
such an action some years since, by which he comes to be happy or miserable
now. In all which account of self, the same numerical substance is not
considered as making the same self, but the same continued consciousness, in
which several substances may have been united, and again separated from it,
which, whilst they continued in a vital union with that wherein this
consciousness then resided, made a part of that same self. Thus any part of
our bodies, vitally united to that which is conscious in us, makes a part of
ourselves: but upon separation from the vital union by which that
consciousness is communicated, that which a moment since was part of
ourselves, is now no more so than a part of another man's self is a part of
me: and it is not impossible but in a little time may become a real part of
another person. And so we have the same numerical substance become a part of
two different persons; and the same person preserved under the change of
various substances. Could we suppose any spirit wholly stripped of all its
memory or consciousness of past actions, as we find our minds always are of a
great part of ours, and sometimes of them all; the union or separation of
such a spiritual substance would make no variation of personal identity, any
more than that of any particle of matter does. Any substance vitally united
to the present thinking being is a part of that very same self which now is;
anything united to it by a consciousness of former actions, makes also a part
of the same self, which is the same both then and now. 26. "Person" a
forensic term. Person, as I take it, is the name for this self. Wherever a
man finds what he calls himself, there, I think, another may say is the same
person. It is a forensic term, appropriating actions and their merit; and so
belongs only to intelligent agents, capable of a law, and happiness, and
misery. This personality extends itself beyond present existence to what is
past, only by consciousness,--whereby it becomes concerned and accountable;
owns and imputes to itself past actions, just upon the same ground and for
the same reason as it does the present. All which is founded in a concern for
happiness, the unavoidable concomitant of consciousness; that which is conscious
of pleasure and pain, desiring that that self that is conscious should be
happy. And therefore whatever past actions it cannot reconcile or appropriate
to that present self by consciousness, it can be no more concerned in than if
they had never been done: and to receive pleasure or pain, i.e., reward or
punishment, on the account of any such action, is all one as to be made happy
or miserable in its first being, without any demerit at all. For, supposing a
man punished now for what he had done in another life, whereof he could be
made to have no consciousness at all, what difference is there between that
punishment and being created miserable? And therefore, conformable to this,
the apostle tells us, that, at the great day, when every one shall "receive
according to his doings, the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open."
The sentence shall be justified by the consciousness all persons shall have,
that they themselves, in what bodies soever they appear, or what substances
soever that consciousness adheres to, are the same that committed those
actions, and deserve that punishment for them.
29. Continuance of that
which we have made to he our complex idea of man makes the same man. For,
supposing a rational spirit be the idea of a man, it is easy to know what is
the same man, viz., the same spirit--whether separate or in a body--will be
the same man. Supposing a rational spirit vitally united to a body of a
certain conformation of parts to make a man; whilst that rational spirit,
with that vital conformation of parts, though continued in a fleeting
successive body, remains, it will be the same man. But if to any one the idea
of a man be but the vital union of parts in a certain shape; as long as that
vital union and shape remain in a concrete, no otherwise the same but by a
continued succession of fleeting particles, it will be the same man. For,
whatever be the composition whereof the complex idea is made, whenever
existence makes it one particular thing under any denomination the same
existence continued preserves it the same individual under the same
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