use of the idea to abstract definitions or external forms, having no reference to the feelings or passions; and again from associating the word imagination with merely fictitious situations and events such as never have a real existence, and which consequently do not admit of action. If then self-love, even the most gross and palpable, can only subsist in a rational and intellectual nature, not circumscribed within the narrow limits of animal life, or of the ignorant present time, but capable of giving life and interest to the forms of its own creatures, to the unreal mockeries of future things, to that shadow of itself which the imagination sends before; is it not the height of absurdity to stop here, and poorly and pitifully to suppose that this pervading power must bow down and worship this idol of its own making, and become its blind and servile drudge, and that it cannot extend its creatures as widely around it, as it projects them forward, that it cannot breathe into all other forms the breath of life, and endow even sympathy with vital warmth, and diffuse the soul of morality through all the relations and sentiments of human life? Take away the real, physical, mechanical principle of self-interest, and it will have no basis to rest upon, but that which it has in common with every principle of

natural justice or humanity. That there is no real, physical, or mechanical principle of selfishness in the mind, has been abundantly proved. All that remains is, to show how the continued identity of the individual with himself has given rise to the notion of self-interest, which after what has been premised will not be a very difficult task. What I shall attempt to show will be, that individuality expresses not either absolute unity or real identity, but properly such a particular relation between a number of things as produces an immediate or continued connexion between them, and a correspondent marked separation between them and other things. Now, in coexisting things, one part may by means of this communication mutually act and be acted upon by others, but where the connexion is continued, or in successive identity of the indvidual, though what follows may depend intimately on what has gone before, that is, be acted upon by it, it cannot react upon it; that is, the identity of the individual with itself can only relate practically to its connexion with its past, and not with its future self.

Every human being is distinguished from every other human being, both numerically and characteristically. He must be numerically

sary

distinct by the supposition, or he would not be another individual, but the same. There is, however, no contradiction in supposing two individuals to possess the same absolute properties: but then these original properties must be differently modified afterwards from the necesdifference of their situations, unless we conceive them both to occupy the same relative situation in two distinct systems, corresponding exactly with each other. In fact, every one is found to differ essentially from every one else; if not in original qualities, in the circumstances and events of their lives, and consequently in their ideas and characters. In thinking of a number of individuals, I conceive of them all as differing in various ways from one another as well as from myself. They differ in size, in complexion, in features, in the expres sion of their countenances, in age, in occupation, in manners, in knowledge, in temper, in power. It is this perception or apprehension of their real differences that first enables me to distinguish the several individuals of the species from each other, and that seems to give rise to the most obvious idea of individuality, as representing, first, positive number, and, secondly, the sum of the differences between one being and

another, as they really exist, in a greater or less degree in nature, or as they would appear to exist to an impartial spectator, or to a perfectly intelligent mind. But I am not in reality more different from others than any one individual is from any other individual, neither do I in fact suppose myself to differ really from them otherwise than as they differ from each other. What is it then that makes the difference seem greater to me, or that makes me feel a greater change in passing from my own idea to that of another person, than in passing from the idea of another person to that of any one else? Neither my existing as a separate being, nor my differing from others, is of itself sufficient to account for the idea of self, since I might equally perceive others to exist and compare their actual differences without ever having this idea.

Farther, individuality is sometimes used to express not so much the absolute difference or distinction between one individual and another, as a relation or comparison of that individual with itself, whereby we tacitly affirm that it is in some way or other the same with itself, or one idea. Now in one sense it is true of all existencies whatever that they are literally the same with themselves; that is, they are what

they are, and not something else. Each thing is itself, is that individual thing, and no other; and each combination of things is that combination, and no other. So also each individual conscious being is necessarily the same with himself; or in other words, that combination of ideas which represents any individual person is that combination of ideas, and not a different one. This literal and verbal is the only true and absolute identity which can be affirmed of any individual; which, it is plain, does not arise from a comparison of the different parts or successive impressions composing the general idea one with another, but each with itself or all of them taken together with the whole. I cannot help thinking that some idea of this kind is frequently at the bottom of the perplexity which is felt by most people who are not metaphysicians (not to mention those who are), when they are told that man is not always the same with himself, their notion of identity being that he must always be what he is. He is the same with himself, in as far as he is not another. When they say that the man is the same being in general, they do not really mean that he is the same at twenty that he is at sixty, but their general idea of him includes both these extremes, and therefore the same man, that is, the