end could possibly be answered by such treatment, as observed above. To dwell upon those surprising consequences that might attend the transferring the same consciousness to different beings, or giving the same being very different ones, is merely puzzling and perplexing the point, by introducing such confusions as never really existed, and would not alter the true state of the question, if they did. Such fairy tales and Arabian transformations, possible or impossible, can only serve to amuse the fancy, without any solid information to the judgment. These flights of mere imagination Mr. Locke generally avoids, though he was here tempted to indulge a few such, in playing with the wild suppositions of his adversaries, [v. g. a change of souls between Socrates and the mayor of Queenborough, &c.] probably to enliven a dry subject, and render it more palatable to the bulk of his readers. Nor are those cases of a disordered imagination in lunacy or vapours, where persons are for a time beside themselves (as we usually term it) and may believe such chimerical alterations to befal them, any more to the purpose. But it were endless to unravel all futile sophisms and false suppositions, that have been introduced into the present question; I have endeavoured to obviate such as appeared most material, and account for them; and at the same time to inculcate a doctrine, which, though common enough, seemed not enough attended to; yet is fundamentally requisite to a right understanding of this intricate subject. And if that which is laid down above be a true state of the case, all the rest of our author's plan, [of placing personal identity in a continuation of thought*] will drop of course. I trust the reader will make allowance for some repetitions, which were left to render things as plain as possible, and prevent future subterfuges of the like kind; and if the substance of these few hasty observations on the first part of this ingenious writer's essay, prove in the least degree satisfactory to himself, or have a tendency to enlarge general knowledge, and guard against popular errours, I must rely upon his candour for excusing the manner in which they are thrown out; and shall take the li * Which disposition, could it be made out, would never answer the intent of society, or help to direct us in our duty, the two grand objects which first gave birth to personality; i. e. to a very partial confined consideration of that complex idea, substance, or being called man. berty of closing them in the form of a syllogism, which is submitted to his consideration : Quo posito ponitur personæ identitas, et quo sublato tollitur, id personalem identitatem constituit: Sed posita conscienta, &c. Ergo. APPENDIX. A friend, well acquainted with the subject of the foregoing sheets, having communicated to me some observations concerning the use of the word Person, which came too late to be inserted in their proper place, I must take the liberty of annexing them, though they occasion some more redundancies and repetitions, in order to throw as much light as is possible on this very obscure and long controverted question. AS Mr. Locke's definition of the term person (chap. xxvii. §. 9.) may possibly create some difficulty, it will be proper to examine into the sense which should be put upon this word, whenever we inquire after the identity of any man's person; which may perhaps at once lead us to a just conception of the whole. In the aforementioned section, Mr. Locke says, that person stands for, "a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection," &c. whereas I should imagine, the expression would have been more just, had he said that the word person stands for an attribute, or quality, or character of a thinking intelligent being; in the same sense as Tully uses it, Orat. pro Syll. §. 3. "Hanc mihi tu si, propter res meas gestas, imponis "in omni vita mea personam, Torquate, vehementer erras. “ Me natura misericordem, patria severum; crudelem nec patria, nec natura esse voluit: denique istam ipsam 66 personam vehementem et acrem, quam mihi tum tempus "et respublica imposuit, jam voluntas et natura ipsa de"traxit." It came at last to be confounded with, and stand for homo gerens personam (Taylor, Civ. L. p. 247, 248.) and in this sense Locke has incautiously defined the word. It is attributed also to more intelligent beings than one; as by the jesuits in their declaration prefixed to the third book of Newton, alienam coactisumus gerere personam. The word person then, according to the received sense in all classical authors, standing for a certain guise, character, quality, i. e. being in fact a mixed mode, or relation, and not a substance; we must next inquire, what particular character or quality it stands for in this place, as the same man may bear many characters and relations at the same, or different times. The answer is, that here it stands for that particular quality or character, under which a man is considered, when he is treated as an intelligent being subject to government and laws, and accountable for his actions: i. e. not the man himself, but an abstract consideration of him, for such and such particular ends and to inquire after its identity is to inquire, not after the identity of a conscious being, but after the identity of a quality or attribute of such a conscious being. All difficulties that relate to a man's forgetting some actions, &c. now vanish, when person is considered as a character, and not a substance, or confounded with homo gerens personam: and it amounts to no more than saying a man puts on a mask-continuing to wear it for some time-puts off one mask and takes another, i. e. appears to have consciousness -to recollect past consciousnesses-does not recollect them, &c. The impropriety consists in saying, a man is the same person with him who did such a fact; which is the same as to say, a man is blackness, guilt, &c. i. e. a mixed mode is predicated of a substance; whereas it ought to be, in strict propriety of speech, the person of the man who did such a fact, is the same with the person of him, who now stands before us; or, in plainer terms, the man who now stands before the court is conscious of the former facts, and is therefore the proper object of punishment. It may be observed, that the word personality is really an absurd expression; since person itself stands for the mixed mode or quality;-and personality therefore may be ranked among the old scholastic terms of corporeity, egoity, tableity, &c. or is even yet more harsh: as mixed modes, such as gratitude, murder, and therefore person, cannot be thus re-modified without peculiar absurdity. |