e. the same substance
or no. Which, however reasonable or unreasonable, concerns not
personal identity at all. The question being what makes the same
person; and not whether it be the same identical substance, which
always thinks in the same person, which, in this case, matters not
at all: different substances, by the same consciousness (where they do
partake in it) being united into one person, as well as different
bodies by the same life are united into one animal, whose identity
is preserved in that change of substances by the unity of one
continued life. For, it being the same consciousness that makes a
man be himself to himself, personal identity depends on that only,
whether it be annexed solely to one individual substance, or can be
continued in a succession of several substances. For as far as any
intelligent being can repeat the idea of any past action with the same
consciousness it had of it at first, and with the same consciousness
it has of any present action; so far it is the same personal self
For it is by the consciousness it has of its present thoughts and
actions, that it is self to itself now, and so will be the same
self, as far as the same consciousness can extend to actions past or
to come. and would be by distance of time, or change of substance,
no more two persons, than a man be two men by wearing other clothes
to-day than he did yesterday, with a long or a short sleep between:
the same consciousness uniting those distant actions into the same
person, whatever substances contributed to their production.
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