And therefore how far
the consciousness of past actions is annexed to any individual
agent, so that another cannot possibly have it, will be hard for us to
determine, till we know what kind of action it is that cannot be
done without a reflex act of perception accompanying it, and how
performed by thinking substances, who cannot think without being
conscious of it. But that which we call the same consciousness, not
being the same individual act, why one intellectual substance may
not have represented to it, as done by itself, what it never did,
and was perhaps done by some other agent- why, I say, such a
representation may not possibly be without reality of matter of
fact, as well as several representations in dreams are, which yet
whilst dreaming we take for true- will be difficult to conclude from
the nature of things. And that it never is so, will by us, till we
have clearer views of the nature of thinking substances, be best
resolved into the goodness of God; who, as far as the happiness or
misery of any of his sensible creatures is concerned in it, will
not, by a fatal error of theirs, transfer from one to another that
consciousness which draws reward or punishment with it. How far this
may be an argument against those who would place thinking in a
system of fleeting animal spirits, I leave to be considered.
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