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 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
matter 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.
Pages:
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477