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 anything, we know that we do so.
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