For, if
Castor's soul can think, whilst Castor is asleep, what Castor is never
conscious of, it is no matter what place it chooses to think in. We
have here, then, the bodies of two men with only one soul between
them, which we will suppose to sleep and wake by turns; and the soul
still thinking in the waking man, whereof the sleeping man is never
conscious, has never the least perception. I ask, then, whether Castor
and Pollux, thus with only one soul between them, which thinks and
perceives in one what the other is never conscious of, nor is
concerned for, are not two as distinct persons as Castor and Hercules,
or as Socrates and Plato were? And whether one of them might not be
very happy, and the other very miserable? Just by the same reason,
they make the soul and the man two persons, who make the soul think
apart what the man is not conscious of. For, I suppose nobody will
make identity of persons to consist in the soul's being united to
the very same numercial particles of matter. For if that be
necessary to identity, it will be impossible, in that constant flux of
the particles of our bodies, that any man should be the same person
two days, or two moments, together.
13. Impossible to convince those that sleep without dreaming, that
they think. Thus, methinks, every drowsy nod shakes their doctrine,
who teach that the soul is always thinking.
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