embryo, one of years, mad and sober, the same man, by any supposition, that will not make it possible for Seth, Ismael, 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. But 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.

§. 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 difficulties, 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 consequently 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, ingenuous 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

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story, that I 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 af"terwards 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 de"sired to know of him what there was of the first? He "told me short and coldly, that he heard of such an old "parrot when he had been at Brazil; and though he be

lieved 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 to the prince? It answered, some general or other; when they brought it "close to him, he asked it, † D'ou venez vous? It answer"ed, De Marinnan. The Prince, A qui estes vous ?

* Memoirs of what passed in Christendom from 1672 to 1679, p. 57,

392.

Whence come ye? It answered, From Marinnan. The Prince, To whom do you belong? The Parrot, To a Portuguese. Prince, What do you there? Parrot, I look after the chickens. The Prince Jaughed and said, You look after the chickens? The parrot answered, Yes, I, and I know well enough how to do it.

"The parrot, A un Portugais. Prince, Que fais tu la? "Parrot, Je garde les poulles. The prince laughed, and "said, Vous gardes les poulles? The parrot answered, "Qui, moi; et je sçai bien faire; 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 Brasilian; I asked whether he "understood Brasilian; he said, no, but he had taken. "care to have two interpreters by him, the one a Dutch"man that spoke Brasilian, and the other a Brasilian that "spoke Dutch; that he asked them separately and pri"vately, 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 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."

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 see, hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will any thing, we know that we do so. Thus it is always 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 these 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 seeems 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 part 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, 1. e. the same substance or no. Which however reasonable or unreasonable, concerns not 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 an hand, and thereby separate it from that consciousness he had of its heat, cold, and other affections, and it is theu no longer a