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. By the second and third, Socrates, in this life and after it, cannot
be the same man any way, but by the same consciousness; and so making human
identity to consist in the same thing wherein we place personal identity,
there will be no difficulty to allow the same man to be the same person. But
then they who place human identity in consciousness only, and not in
something else, must consider how they will make the infant Socrates the same
man with Socrates after the resurrection. But whatsoever to some men makes a
man, and consequently the same individual man, wherein perhaps few are
agreed, personal identity can by us be placed in nothing but consciousness,
(which is that alone which makes what we call self,) without involving us in
great absurdities. 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. 27. Suppositions that look strange are pardonable in our ignorance. I
am apt enough to think I have, in treating of this subject, made some
suppositions that will look strange to some readers, and possibly they are so
in themselves. But yet, I think they are such as are pardonable, in this
ignorance we are in of the nature of that thinking thing that is in us, and
which we look on as ourselves. Did we know what it was, or how it was tied to
a certain system of fleeting animal spirits; or whether it could or could not
perform its operations of thinking and memory out of a body organized as ours
is; and whether it has pleased God that no one such spirit shall ever be
united to any but one such body, upon the right constitution of whose organs
its memory should depend; we might see the absurdity of some of those
suppositions I have made. But taking, as we ordinarily now do (in the dark
concerning these matters), the soul of a man for an immaterial substance,
independent from matter, and indifferent alike to it all; there can, from the
nature of things, be no absurdity at all to suppose that the same soul may at
different times be united to different bodies, and with them make up for that
time one man: as well as we suppose a part of a sheep's body yesterday should
be a part of a man's body to-morrow, and in that union make a vital part of
Meliboeus himself, as well as it did of his ram. 28. The difficulty from ill use of names. To conclude: Whatever
substance begins to exist, it must, during its existence, necessarily be the
same: whatever compositions of substances begin to exist, during the union of
those substances, the concrete must be the same: whatsoever mode begins to
exist, during its existence it is the same: and so if the composition be of
distinct substances and different modes, the same rule holds. Whereby it will
appear, that the difficulty or obscurity that has been about this matter
rather rises from the names ill-used, than from any obscurity in things
themselves. For whatever makes the specific idea to which the name is
applied, if that idea be steadily kept to, the distinction of anything into
the same and divers will easily be conceived, and there can arise no doubt
about it. 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 denomination.
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