and equally agreeable to the universal confent of mankind. If a man were to speak and act in the evening, as if he believed himfelf to have become a different perfon fince the morning, the whole world would pronounce him in a state of infanity. Were we to attempt to difbelieve our own identity, we should labour in vain; we could as easily bring ourselves to believe, that it is poffible for the fame thing to be and not to be. But there is no reason to think, that this attempt was ever made by any man, not even by Mr HUME himself; though that author, in, his Treatife of Human Nature, hath afferted, yea, and proved, (according to his notions of proof), that the human foul is perpetually chan ging; being nothing but " a bundle of "perceptions, that fucceed each other "with inconceivable rapidity, and are

(as he chufes to express it) in a perpe"tual flux *" He might as eafily, and as decifively, with equal credit to his own understanding, and with equal advantage to the reader, by a method of reasoning

Treatife of Human Nature, vol. 1. p. 438. &c.

no lefs philofophical, and with the fame degree of difcretion in the use of words, have attacked the axioms of mathematics, and produced a formal and ferious confutation of them. In explaining the evidence on which we believe our own identity, it is not neceffary, that I fhould here examine his arguments against that belief: first, because the point in question is felf-evident, and therefore all reasoning on the other fide unphilofophical and irrational; and, fecondly, because I fhall afterwards prove, that fome of Mr HUME'S firft principles are inconceivable and impoffible; and that this very notion of his concerning identity, when fairly stated, is abfurd and felf-contradictory.

It has been asked, how we can pretend to have full evidence of our identity, when of identity itself we are fo far from having a diftinct notion, that we cannot define it. It might with as good reafon be asked, how we come to believe that two and two are equal to four, or that a circle is different from a triangle, fince we cannot define either equality or diverfity:-why we believe in our own existence, fince we can

not

not define existence: why, in a word, the vulgar believe any thing at all, fince they know nothing about the rules of definition, and hardly ever attempt it. In fact, we have numberlefs ideas that admit not of definition, and yet concerning which we may argue, and believe, and know, with the utmost clearnefs and certainty. To define heat or cold, identity or diversity, red or white, an ox or an ass, would puzzle all the logicians on earth; yet nothing can be clearer, or more certain, than many of our judgements concerning those objects. The rudest of the vulgar know most perfectly what they mean, when they fay, Three months ago I was at fuch a town, and have ever fince been at home: and the conviction they have of the truth of this propofition is founded on the best of evidence, namely, on that of internal fenfe; in which all men, by the law of their nature, do and must implicitly believe.

It has been asked, whether this continued conscioufnefs of our being always the fame, does not conftitute our fameness or identity. No more, I fhould answer, than our perception of truth, light, or cold,

L 2

cold, is the efficient caufe of truth, light, or cold. Our identity is perceived by confcioufnefs; but confcioufnefs is as different from identity, as the understanding is different from truth, as past events are different from memory, as colours from the power of feeing. Confcioufnefs of identity is fo far from conftituting identity, that it prefuppofes it. An animal might continue the fame being, and yet not be confcious of its identity; which is probably the cafe with many of the brute creation; nay, which is often the cafe with man himself. When we fleep without dreaming, or fall into a fainting fit *, or

rave

*The following cafe, which M. Crozaz gave in to the Academy of Sciences, is the moft extraordinary inftance of interrupted consciousness I have ever heard of. A nobleman of Laufanne, as he was giving orders to a fervant, fuddenly loft his fpeech and all his fenfes. Different remedies were tried without effect for fix months; during all which time he appeared to be in a deep fleep, or deliquium, with various fymptoms at different periods, which are particularly fpecified in the narration. At laft, after fome chirurgical operations, at the end of fix months his fpeech and fenfes were fuddenly reftored. When he recovered, the fame fervant to whom he had been giving orders when he was first feized with the distemper, happening to be in the room, he asked whether he had executed his commiffion; not being fenfible, it feems, that

any

rave in a fever, and often too in our ordinary dreams, we lofe all fenfe of our identity, and yet never conceive that our identity has fuffered any interruption or change the moment we awake or recover, we are confcious that we are the fame individual beings we were before.

Many doubts and difficulties have been ftarted about our manner of conceiving identity of perfon under a change of substance. Plutarch tells us, that in the time of Demetrius Phalereus, the Athenians ftill preferved the cuftom of fending every year to Delos the fame galley which, about a thousand years before, had brought Thefeus and his company from Crete;

any interval of time, except perhaps a very fhort one, had elapfed during his illness. He lived ten years after, and died of another difeafe. See L'Hiftoire de l'Academie Royale des Sciences, pour l'année 1719, p. 28. Van Swieten alfo relates this story in his commentaries on Boerhaave's aphorifms, under the head Apoplexy. I mention it chiefly with a view to the reader's amufement; he may confider the evidence, and then believe or difbelieve as he pleases. But that consciousness may be interrupted by a total deliquium, without any change in our notions of our own identity, I know by my own experience. I am therefore fully perfuaded, that the identity of this fubftance, which I call my foul, may continue even when I am unconfcious of it; and if for a shorter space, why not for a longer?

and