immaterial remaining, there can a be two 3 Persons. 14. As to the second part of the question, Whether the BOOK II. same immaterial substance remaining, there may be two CHAP. distinct persons; which question seems to me to be built XXVII. on this, -Whether the same immaterial being, being conscious Whether, of the action of its past duration, may be wholly stripped the same of all the consciousness of its past existence, and lose it Substance beyond the power of ever retrieving it again1: and so as it were beginning a new account from a new period, have consciousness that cannot reach beyond this new state. All those who hold pre-existence are evidently of this mind; since they allow the soul to have no remaining consciousness of what it did in that pre-existent state, either wholly separate from body, or informing any other body; and if they should not, it is plain experience would be against them 2. So that personal identity, reaching no further than consciousness reaches, a pre-existent spirit not having continued so many ages in a state of silence, must needs make different persons. Suppose a Christian Platonist or a Pythagorean should, upon God's having ended all his works of creation the seventh day, think his soul hath existed ever since; and should imagine it has revolved in several human bodies; as I once met with one, who was persuaded his had been the soul of Socrates (how reasonably I will not dispute; this I know, that in the post he filled, which was no inconsiderable one, he passed for a very rational man, and the press has shown that he wanted not parts or learning ;)—would any one say, that he, being not conscious of any of Socrates's actions or thoughts, could be the same person with Socrates 4? Let any one reflect upon himself, and conclude that he has in himself an immaterial spirit, which is that which thinks in him, and, in the constant 1 There being in that case not only no actual, but no potential memory of a past conscious life. 2 Hardly so, if the Platonic interpretation of the universal ideas of reason, as reminiscence of what we were conscious of, in a pre-existing state, is taken literally, as rendered in Wordsworth's 'Ode on Intimations of Immortality.' 3 Consciousness,' i. e. memory, including its latent possibilities. But what if the conscious experience of Socrates, is all the while latent in him, and capable of being recollected by him, as on the thread of his consciousness? When the recollection occurs, Locke would say, he finds himself the same person who then went under that name. Locke, is satirised in Martinus Scriblerus for his paradoxical illustrations of the idea of personal identity. СНАР. XXVII. BOOK II. change of his body keeps him the same: and is that which he calls himself: let him also suppose it to be the same soul that was in Nestor or Thersites, at the siege of Troy, (for souls being, as far as we know anything of them, in their nature indifferent to any parcel of matter, the supposition has no apparent absurdity in it,) which it may have been, as well as it is now the soul of any other man: but he now having no consciousness of any of the actions either of Nestor or Thersites, does or can he conceive himself the same person with either of them? Can he be concerned in either of their actions'? attribute them to himself, or think them his own, more than the actions of any other men that ever existed? So that this consciousness, not reaching to any of the actions of either of those men, he is no more one self with either of them than if the soul or immaterial spirit that now informs him had been created, and began to exist, when it began to inform his present body; though it were never so true, that the same spirit that informed Nestor's or Thersites' body were numerically the same that now informs his1. For this would no more make him the same person with Nestor, than if some of the particles of matter that were once a part of Nestor were now a part of this man; the same immaterial substance, without the same consciousness, no more making the same person, by being united to any body, than the same particle of matter, without consciousness, united to any body, makes the same person. But let him once find himself conscious of any of the actions of Nestor, he then finds himself the same person with Nestor. The body, as well as the soul, 15. And thus may we be able, without any difficulty, to conceive the same person at the resurrection 2, though in a СНАР. XXVII. goes to making of body not exactly in make or parts the same which he had BOOK II. 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 the soul of a prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the a Man. 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 himself1. 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 2. personal identity, is indifferent to sameness of body. 'My idea of personal identity,' Locke replies, 'makes the same body not to be necessary to making the same person, either here or after death; and even in this life the particles of the bodies of the same persons change every moment, and there is thus no such identity in the body as in the person.' Moreover, while the resurrection of the dead is revealed in scripture, we find 'no such express words there as that the body shall rise, or the resurrection of the body; and though I do not question that the dead shall be raised with bodies, as matter of revelation, I think it our duty to keep close to the words Because sameness of person is BOOK II. СНАР. XXVII. Con alone unites actions into the same Person. 16. 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 sciousness 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 1 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. Self de. pends on 17. Self is that conscious thinking thing,—whatever sub persons,' says Berkeley (C. P. B. 1 'whatever.' Does this mean, which the presuppositions of reason are primarily embodied are, throughout the Essay, always apt to throw in the background the metaphysical presuppositions which they imply. Concrete examples supersede their principles. Locke prefers the practical consideration of particular facts given in consciousness to elaboration of abstract theories about their substance.' * ' Accountability' is with Locke a criterion of personality. We are ' persons' only in respect to what is necessary for this. Person is a 'forensic term.' (Cf. § 26.) It does not mean a man, or any other living agent, merely as such, but only an ego that actually (or potentially?) appropriates СНАР. ness, not on Sub stance made up of, (whether spiritual or material, simple or BOOK II. compounded, it matters not)-which is sensible or conscious of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is XXVII. concerned for itself, as far as that consciousness extends1. ConThus every one finds that, whilst comprehended under that sciousconsciousness, the little finger is as much a part of himself as what is most so. Upon separation of this little finger, stance. 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 2 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 *. not Sub Objects of 18. In this personal identity is founded all the right and Persons, justice of reward and punishment; happiness and misery stances, being that for which every one is concerned for himself, and the not mattering what becomes of any substance, not joined to, Reward or affected with that consciousness. For, as it is evident in and the instance I gave but now, if the consciousness went along ment. with the little finger when it was cut off, that would be the past actions. No being that is not capable of recognising his own past answers this description. So that a madman, though he is living and a man, is not, in Locke's forensic sense, a person. For he cannot be justly punished for what the sane man did. Therefore more is necessary to the idea of a person than to the idea of a man ; and that, Locke argues, is intelligent recognition of a past as his own past. I What is this but a definition of a spiritual substance? Punish |