the accomplishing of the voyage intended, and the other to future use.

CHAP. XXVII.

OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY.

THE mind often compares the very being of things; when considering any thing 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 any thing in any place at one instant of time, we are sure it is not another thing existing at that same instant of time in another place, however like in every respect: and in this consists identity, that the ideas attributed to

it

vary not at all from what they were that moment wherein we consider their former existence, and to which we compare the present: hence it follows that two things of the same kind cannot exist at the same instant in the same place, nor one and the same thing in different places.

We have ideas but of three sorts of substances, God, Finite Intelligencies, and Bodies.-1st, God is without beginning, eternal, unalterable, and every where; concerning his identity therefore there can be no doubt. 2dly, 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.—3dly, The same will hold of every particle of matter, which suffering no addition or subtraction of matter it is the same. Though these three sorts of substances 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; else the notions and names of identity and diversity would be in vain, and there could be no distinction of substances one from another.

There can be no doubt of the diversity of the actions of finite beings, viz. motion and thought; because consisting in a continued train of succession, 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.

We may now easily discover the so much enquired after principium individuationis: for it is plainly existence itself which determines a being of any sort to a particular time and place incommunicable to two beings of the same kind. The Identity of a mass of matter depends on the existence of the same number of particles or atoms united together, however confused: the Identity of living creatures is different, where the variation of great parcels of matter alters

not the identity: an oak growing from a plant to a great tree is still the same oak; and a colt grown up to a horse, at one time fat, at another lean, is still the same horse; though in both these cases there may be a manifest change of the parts: an oak then is the same plant, as long as it partakes of the same life, though communicated to new particles of matter, vitally united to the living plant, in a continued organization conformable to that sort of plants.

The Identity of man consists in a participation of the same continued life by constantly fleeting particles of matter, in succession vitally united to the same organized body; 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: but this would be a strange use of the word Man, applied to an idea out of which body and shape is excluded. Unity of substance will not determine identity in every case; but to conceive of it rightly, we must consider what the idea is to which we apply it; for if the names person, man, and substance stand for three different ideas, the identity of each must be different.

Our idea of man is of an animal of a certain form; for whoever should see a creature of his own shape and make, though possessing no more reason than a

parrot, would still call him a man; and whoever should hear a parrot discourse and reason would still only think it a parrot. If then the idea of a Man be not merely of a rational being, but also of a body so and so shaped, the same successive body not shifted all at once must, as well as the same immaterial spirit, go to the making of the same man.

Person stands for 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 by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and essential to it. We cannot see or hear, meditate or will, without knowing that we do so: consciousness always accompanying our perceptions makes each person distinguish himself from all other thinking things; and in this alone consists personal identity, i. e. the sameness of a rational being: as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person.

Our consciousness being frequently interrupted, by forgetfulness, by such an intent regard to our present thoughts as prevents our reflecting on our past selves and by sound sleep, (when we have either no thoughts or no consciousness of them,) doubts are raised whether we are the same thinking thing, i. e. the same substance or not; which however reasonable, concern not personal identity at all: the question

being what makes the same person, not whether the same identical substance always thinks in the same person; for this matters not: different substances by the same consciousness (where they partake in it) being united into one person; just as different bodies by the same life are united into one animal,—where in the change of substances the identity is preserved by the unity of a continued life.

By placing Identity of person in consciousness, we may easily conceive the same person at the resurrection, whether or not his body be in make or parts the same as he had here;-for whether the substance be the same, material, or immaterial, whatever has the consciousness of present and past actions, however remote in time, is the same person to whom they both belong;-and in this personal identity is founded the justice of reward and punishment. If it be possible for the same man to have distinct incommunicable consciousnesses at different times, without doubt the same man would at different times make different persons; which we see is the sense of mankind in the most solemn declaration of their opinions; human laws not punishing the mad man for the sober man's actions, nor the sober man for what the madman did, thereby making them two persons.-But, it may be asked, why a sober man is punished for a fact committed when drunk, of which he is not conscious; or why a man that walks in his sleep is an