or thought, considered as at different times, can be the same, each part thereof having a different beginning of existence.

§ 3. Principium individuationis. From what has been said, it is easy to discover what is so much inquired after, the principium individuationis; and that, it is plain, is existence itself, which determines a being of any sort to a particular time and place incommunicable to two beings of the same kind. This, though it seems easier to conceive in simple substances or modes, yet when reflected on, is not more difficult in compound ones, if care be taken to what it is applied; v. g., let us suppose an atom, i. e. a continued body, under one immutable superficies, existing in a determined time and place; it is evident, that considered in any instant of its existence, it is, in that instant, the same with itself. For being at that instant what it is, and nothing else, it is the same, and so must continue as long as its existence is continued; for so long it will be the same, and no other. In like manner, if two or more atoms be joined together into the same mass, every one of those atoms will be the same, by the foregoing rule. And whilst they exist united together, the mass, consisting of the same atoms, must be the same mass, or the same body, let the parts be ever so differently jumbled; but if one of these atoms be taken away, or one new one added, it is no longer the same mass, or the same body. In the state of the living creatures, their identity depends not on a mass of the same particles, but on something else. For in them the variation of great parcels of matters alters not the identity; an oak growing from a plant to a great tree, and then lopped, is still the same oak; and a colt grown up to a horse, sometimes fat, sometimes lean, is all the while the same horse; though, in both these cases, there may be a manifest change of the parts; so that truly they are not, either of them, the same masses of matter, though they be truly one of them, the same oak; and the other, the same horse. The reason whereof is, that in these two cases, a mass of matter, and a living body, identity is not applied to the same thing.

§ 4. Identity of vegetables.-We must, therefore, consider wherein an oak differs from a mass of matter, and that seems to me to be in this; that the one is only the cohesion of particles of matter any how united; the other, such a disposition of them, as constitutes the parts of an oak; and such an organization of those parts, as is fit to receive, and distribute nourishment, so as to continue and frame the wood, bark, and leaves, &c., of an oak, in which consists the vegetable life. That being then one plant, which has such an organization of parts in one coherent body, partaking of one common life, it continues to be the same plant, as long as it partakes of the same 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 sort of plants. For this organization being, at any one instant, in any one collection of matter, is in that particular concrete distinguished from all other, and is that individual life, which existing constantly from that moment both forwards and backwards, in the same continuity of insensibly succeeding parts united to the living body of the plant, it has that identity which makes the same plant, and all the parts of it, parts of the same plant, during all the time that they exist united in that continued

organization, which is fit to convey that common life to all the parts so united.

§ 5. Identity of animals.-The case is not so much different in brutes, but that any one may hence see what makes an animal, and continues it the same. Something we have like this in machines, and may serve to illustrate it. For example, what is a watch? It is plain it is nothing but a fit organization or construction of parts, to a certain end, which, when a sufficient force is added to it, it is capable to attain. If we would suppose this machine one continued body, all whose organized parts were repaired, increased, or diminished, by a constant addition or separation of insensible parts with one common life, we should have something very much like the body of an animal, with this difference, that in an animal, the fitness of the organization, and the motion wherein life consists, begin together, the motion coming from within : but in machines, the force coming sensibly from without, is often away when the organ is in order, and well fitted to receive it.

§ 6. Identity of man.-This also shews wherein the identity of the same man consists; viz. in nothing but a participation of the same continued life, by constantly fleeting particles of matter, in succession, vitally united to the same organized body. He that shall place the identity of man in any thing else, but like that of other animals, in one fitly organized body, taken in any one instant, and from thence continued, under one organization of life, in several successively fleeting particles of matter, united to it, will find it hard to make an embryo, one of years, mad and sober, the same man, by any supposition that will not make it possible for Seth, Ishmael, Socrates, Pilate, St. Austin, and Cæsar Borgia, to be the same man. 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; which way of speaking must be, from a very strange use of the word man, applied to an idea out of which body and shape are excluded; and that way of speaking would agree yet worse with the notions of those philosophers, who allow of transmigration, and are of opinion that the souls of men may, for their miscarriages, be detruded into the bodies of beasts, as fit habitations, with organs suited to the satisfaction of their brutal inclinations. yet, I think, nobody, could he be sure that the soul of Heliogabalus were in one of his hogs, would yet say that hog were a man, or Heliogabalus.

But

§ 7. Identity suited to the idea. It is not, therefore, unity of substance that comprehends all sorts of identity, or will determine it in every case; but to conceive and judge of it aright, we must consider what idea the word it is applied to, stands for; it being one thing to be the same substance; another, the same man; and a third, the same person; if person, man, and substance, are three names standing for three different ideas; for such as is the idea belonging to that name, such must be the identity; which, if it had been a little more carefully attended to, would possibly have prevented a great deal of that confusion which often occurs about this matter, with no small seeming diffi

culties, especially concerning personal identity, which, therefore, we shall, in the next place, a little consider.

§8. Same man.-An animal is a living organized body; and frequently the same animal, as we have observed, is the same continued life communicated to different particles of matter, as they happen successively to be united to that organized living body. And whatever is talked of other definitions, ingenious observation puts it past doubt, that the idea in our minds, of which the sound man in our mouths is the sign, is nothing else but of an animal of such a certain form; since I think I may be confident, that whoever should see a creature of his own shape 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, reason, and philosophize, would call or think it nothing but a cat or a parrot; and say, 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 sufficient to countenance the supposition 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 so often from many others, of an old parrot he had in Brazil, during his government there, that spoke, and asked, and answered, common questions, like a reasonable creature; so that those of his train there, generally concluded it to be witchery or possession; and one of his chaplains, who lived long afterwards in Holland, would never, from that time, endure a parrot, but said, they all had a devil in them. I had heard many particulars of this story, and assevered by people hard to be discredited, which made me ask Prince Maurice what there was of it? He said, with his usual plainness and dryness in talk, there was something true, but a great deal false, of what had been reported. I desired to know of him what there was of the first? He told me short and coldly, that he had heard of such an old parrot when he had been at Brazil; and though he believed nothing of it, and it was a good way off, yet he had so much curiosity as to send for it; that it was a very great and a very old one; and when it came first into the room where the prince was, with a great many Dutchmen about him, it said presently, 'What a company of white men are here!' They asked it what it thought that man was? pointing at the prince. It answered, 'Some general or other;' when they brought it close to him, he asked it, D'ou venez vous? 'Whence come ye?' It answered, De Marinnan. From Marinnan.' The prince, A qui estes-vous? To whom do you belong?' Parrot, A un Portugais.To a Portuguese.' Prince, Que fais-tu là? What do you there?' The parrot, Je garde les poules. I look after the chickens.' The prince laughed, and said, Vous gardez les poules? You look after the chickens?' The parrot answered, Oui, moi; et je sçais bien faire; Yes, I; and I know well enough how to do it; and made the chuck, four or five times, that people use to make to chickens when they call them. I set down the words of this worthy dialogue in French, just as Prince Maurice said them to me. I asked him in what language the parrot spoke? and he said in Brazilian. I

• Memoirs of what passed in Christendom, from 1672 to 1769, p. 32.

asked whether he understood Brazilian? he said, no: but he had taken care to have two interpreters by him, the one, a Dutchman that spoke Brazilian, and the other, a Brazilian that spoke Dutch; that he asked them separately and privately, and both of them agreed in telling him just the same thing that the parrot had said. I could not but tell this odd story, because it is so much out of the way, and from the first hand, and what may pass for a good one; for I dare say this prince, at least, believed himself in all he told me, having ever passed for a very honest and pious man. I leave it to naturalists to reason, and to other men to believe, as they please upon it; however, it is not, perhaps, amiss to relieve or enliven a busy scene sometimes with such digressions, whether to the purpose or no."

Same man. I have taken care that the reader should have the story at large in the author's own words, because he seems to me not to have thought it incredible; for it cannot be imagined that so able a man as he, who had sufficiency enough to warrant all the testimonies he gives of himself, should take so much pains, in a place where it had nothing to do, to pin so close, not only on a man whom he mentions as his friend, but on a prince, in whom he acknowledges very great honesty and piety, a story, which, if he himself thought incredible, he could not but also think ridiculous. The prince, it is plain, who vouches this story, and our author who relates it from him, both of them call this talker a parrot; and I ask any one else, who thinks such a story fit to be told, whether if this parrot, and all of its kind, had always talked, as we have a prince's word for it this one did; whether, I say, they would not have passed for a race of rational animals; but yet, whether, for all that, they would have been allowed to be men, and not parrots? For I presume it is not the idea of a thinking or rational being alone, that makes the idea of a man in most people's sense, but of a body, so and so shaped, joined to it; and if that be the idea of a man, 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.

§ 9. Personal identity.-This being premised, to find wherein personal identity consists, we must consider what person stands for; which, I think, is 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 only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it; it being impossible for any one to perceive, without perceiving that he does perceive. When we hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will any thing, we know that we do so. Thus it is always as to our present sensations and perceptions; and by this every one is to himself that which he calls self; it not being considered in this case, whether the same self be continued in the same or divers substances. For since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that which makes every one to be what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things; in this, alone, consists personal identity, i. e. the sameness of a rational being; and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards, to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person; it is the same self now, it was then; and

it is by the same self with this present one, that now reflects on it, that that action was done.

§ 10. Consciousness makes personal identity.—But it is farther inquired, whether it be the same identical substance? This, few would think they had reason to doubt of, if those perceptions, with their consciousness, always remained present in the mind, whereby the same thinking thing would be always consciously present, and, as would be thought, evidently the same to itself. But that which seems to make the difficulty, is this, that this consciousness being interrupted always by forgetfulness, there being no moment of our lives wherein we have the whole train of all our past actions before our eyes in one view; but even the best memories losing the sight of one part, whilst they are viewing another and we sometimes, and that the greatest parts of our lives, not reflecting on our past selves, being intent on our present thoughts; and in sound sleep, having no thoughts at all, or, at least, none with that consciousness which remarks our waking thoughts: I say, in all these cases, our consciousness being interrupted, and we losing the sight of our past selves, doubts are raised whether we are the same thinking thing, i. e. the same substance, or no; which, however reasonable, or unreasonable, concerns no personal identity at all: the question being, what makes the same person; and not whether it be the same identical substance, which always thinks in the same person; which in this case matters not at all: different substances, by the same consciousness (where they do partake in it), being united into one person, as well as different bodies, by the same life, are united into one animal, whose identity is preserved, in that change of substances, by the unity of one continued life. For it being the same consciousness that makes a man be himself to himself, personal identity depends on that only, whether it be annexed solely to one individual substance, or can be continued in a succession of several substances. For as far as any intelligent being can repeat the idea of any past action with the same consciousness it had of it at first, and with the same consciousness it has of any present action; so far it is the same personal self. For it is by the consciousness it has of its present thoughts and actions, that it is self to itself now, and so will be the same self, as far as the same consciousness can extend to actions past or to come; and would be by distance of time, or change of substance, no more two persons, than a man be two men, by wearing other clothes to-day than he did yesterday, with a long or a short sleep between; the same consciousness uniting those distant actions into the same person, whatever substances contributed to their production.

§ 11. Personal identity in change of substances.—That this is so, we have some kind of evidence in our very bodies, all whose particles, whilst vitally united to this same thinking conscious self, so that we feel when they are touched, and are affected by, and conscious of good or harm that happens to them, are a part of ourselves; i. e. of our thinking conscious self. Thus the limbs of his body are to every one a part of himself; he sympathizes and is concerned for them. Cut off a hand, and thereby separate it from that consciousness he had of its heat, cold, and other affections, and it is then no longer a part of that which is