For, if we take wholly away
all consciousness of our actions and sensations, especially of
pleasure and pain, and the concernment that accompanies it, it will be
hard to know wherein to place personal identity.
12. If a sleeping man thinks without knowing it, the sleeping and
waking man are two persons. The soul, during sound sleep, thinks,
say these men. Whilst it thinks and perceives, it is capable certainly
of those of delight or trouble, as well as any other perceptions;
and it must necessarily be conscious of its own perceptions. But it
has all this apart: the sleeping man, it is plain, is conscious of
nothing of all this. Let us suppose, then, the soul of Castor, while
he is sleeping, retired from his body; which is no impossible
supposition for the men I have here to do with, who so liberally allow
life, without a thinking soul, to all other animals. These men
cannot then judge it impossible, or a contradiction, that the body
should live without the soul; nor that the soul should subsist and
think, or have perception, even perception of happiness or misery,
without the body. Let us then, I say, suppose the soul of Castor
separated during his sleep from his body, to think apart. Let us
suppose, too, that it chooses for its scene of thinking the body of
another man, v.g. Pollux, who is sleeping without a soul.
Pages:
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143