§ 2. Identity of Subftances.

WE have the ideas but of three forts of substances; 1. God. 2. Finite intelligences. 3. Bodies. First, GoD is without beginning, eternal, unalterable, and every where; and therefore, concerning his identity, there can be no doubt. Secondly, Finite fpirits 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 exifts. Thirdly, The fame will hold of every particle of matter, to which no addition or fubtraction of matter being made, it is the fame. For though these three forts of fubftances, as we term them, do not exclude one another out of the fame place; yet we cannot conceive but that they must neceffarily each of them exclude any of the fame kind out of the fame place; or else the notions and names of identity and diverfity would be in vain, and there could be no fuch diftinction of subftances, or any thing elfe, one from another. For example could two bodies be in the fame place at the fame time, then those two parcels of matter must be one and the fame, take them great or little ; nay, all bodies must be one and the fame. For, by the fame 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 eiftinction of identity and diverfity of one and more, and renders it ridiculous. But it being a contradiction that two or more fhould be one, identity and diverfity are relations and ways of comparing well founded, and of ufe to the understanding. All other things being but modes or relations ultimately terminated in fubftances, the identity and diverfity of each particular exiftence of them too will be by the fame way determined: only as to things whofe exiftence is in fucceffion; fuch as are the actions of finite beings, ข g.* motion and thought, both which exist in a continued train of fucceffion, concerning their diversity, there can be no question : because each perifhing the moment it begins, they cannot exift in different times, or in different places, as permanent beings can at different times

exift in diftant places; and therefore no motion or thought, confidered as at different times, can be the fane, each part thereof having a different beginning of existence.

§3. Principium Individuationis.

FROM what has been faid, it is eafy to difcover what is fo much enquired after, the principium individuationis : and that, it is plain, is exiftence itfelf, which determines a being of any fort to a particular time and place incommunicable to two beings of the fame kind. This, though it seems easier to conceive in fimple fubftances or modes, yet when reflected on, is not more difficult in compounded ones, if care be taken to what it is applied. g. let us fuppofe an atom, i. e. a continued body, under one immutable fuperfices, exifting in a determined time and place; it is evident that, confidered in any inftant of its existence, it is in that inftant the fame with itfelf. For being at that inftant what it is, and nothing elfe, it is the fame, and fo must continue as long as its existence is continued; for fo long it will be the fame, and no other. In like manner, if two or more atoms be joined together into the fame mafs, every one of thofe atoms will be the fame, by the foregoing rule and whilft they exift united together, the mafs, confifting of the fame atoms, must be the fame mafs, or the fame body, let the parts be ever fo differently jumbled. But if one of these atoms be taken away, or one new one added, it is no longer the fame mafs, or the fame body. In the ftate of living creatures, their identity depends not on a mafs of the fame particles, but on fomething elfe. For in them the variation of great parcels of matters alter not the identity: an oak growing from a plant to a great tree, and then lopped, is ftill the fame oak: and a colt grown up to a horfe, fometimes fat, fometimes lean, is all the while the fame horfe; though in both thefe cafes, there may be a manifeft change of the parts; fo that truly they are not either of them the fame maffes of matter, though they be truly one of them the fame oak, and the other the fame horfe. The reason whereof is,

that in thefe two cafes, a mafs of matter, and a liv ing body, identity is not applied to the same thing. § 4. Identity of Vegetables.

any

We must therefore confider wherein an oak differs from a mafs of matter, and that seems to me to be in this: that the one is only the cohefion of particles of matter how united, the other such a difpofition of them as conftitutes the parts of an oak; and fuch an organization of thofe parts as is fit to receive and diftribute nourishment, fo as to continue and frame the wood, bark, and leaves, &c. of an oak, in which confifts the vegetable life. That being then one plant, which has fuch an organization of parts in one coherent body, partaking of one common life, it continues to be the fame plant as long as it partakes of the fame 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 fort of plants. For this organization being at any one inftant in any one collection of matter, is in that particular concrete diftinguished om all other, and is that individual life, which exifting conftantly from that moment both forwards and backwards, in the fame continuity of infenfible fucceeding parts united to the living body of the plant, it has that identity which makes the fame plant, and all the parts of it, parts of the fame plant, during all the time that they exift united in that continued organization, which is fit to convey that common life to all the parts fo united.

$5. Identity of Animals.

THE cafe is not fo much different in brutes, but that any one may hence fee what makes an animal, and continues it the fame. Something we have like this in machines, and may ferve to illuftrate it. For example, What is a watch? It is plain it is nothing but a fit organization, or conftruction of parts, to a certain end, which, when a fufficient force is added to it, it is capable to attain. If we would fuppofe this machine one continued body, all whofe organized parts were repaired, increased or diminished, by a conftant addition or feparation of infenfible parts, with one common life, we

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fhould have fomething very much like the body of an animal, with this difference, that in an animal the fitnefs of the organization, and the motion wherein life confiits, begin together, the motion coming from within but in machines, the force coming fenfibly from without, is often away when the organ is in order, and well fitted to receive it

§ 6. Identity of Man.

THIS alfo fhows wherein the identity of the fame man confifts, viz. in nothing but a participation of the fame continued life, by conftantly fleeting particles of matter, in fucceffion, vitally united to the fame organized body. He that fhall place the identity of man in any thing elfe, but, like that of other animals, in one fitly organized body, taken in any one inftant, and from thence continued under one organization of life in feveral fucceffively fleeting particles of matter united to it, will find it hard to make an embryo, one of years, mad and fober, the fame man, by any fuppofition, that will not make it poffible for Seth, Ifmael, Socrates, Pilate, St. Auftin, and Cæfar Borgia, to be the fame man. For if the identity of foul alone makes the fame man, and there be nothing in the nature of matter, why the fame individual fpirit may not be united to different bodies, it will be poffible that thofe men, living in diftant ages, and of different tempers, may have been the fame man; which way of fpeaking must be from a very Atrange ufe of the word man, applied to an idea, out of which body and fhape are excluded. And that way of fpeaking would agree yet worfe with the notions of thofe philofophers who allow of tranfmigration, and are of opinion that the fouls of men may, for their mifcarriages, be detruded into the bodies of beafts, as fit habitations, with organs fuited to the fatisfaction of their brutal inclinations. But yet, I think, nobody could be fure that the foul of Heliogabalus were in one of his hogs, would yet fay that hog were a man Per Heliogabalus.

$7. Identity fuited to the Idea.

Ir is not therefore unity of fubftance that comprehends

all forts of identity, or will determine it in every cafe : but to conceive and judge of it aright, we must confider what idea the word it is applied to ftands for; it being one thing to be the fame fubftance, another the fame man, and a third the same perfon, if person, mån, and fubflance are three names ftanding for three different ideas; for fuch as is the idea belonging to that name, fuch must be the identity which, if it had been a little more carefully attended to, would poffibly have prevented a great deal of that confufion, which often occurs about this matter, with no fmall feeming difficulties, efpecially concerning perfonal identity, which therefore we shall in the next place a little consider.

§ 8. Same Man.

AN animal is a living, organized body; and confequently the fame animal, as we have obferved, is the fame continued life communicated to different particles of matter, as they happen fucceffively to be united to that organized living body. And whatever is talked of other definitions, ingenious obfervation puts it paft doubt, that the idea in our minds, of which the found man in our mouths is the fign, is nothing else but of an animal of fuch a certain form: fince I think I may be confident, that whoever fhould fee a creature of his own fhape and 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, reafon and philofophize, would call or think it nothing but a cat or a parrot; and fay 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 fufficient to countenance the fuppofition 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 fo often from many others, of "an old parrot he had in Brafil during his government "there, that fpoke, and asked and anfwered common

? Memoirs of what passed in Christendom, from 1672 to 1679. P.57-392,