So that personal identity,
reaching no further than consciousness reaches, a pre-existent
spirit not having continued so many ages in a state of silence, must
needs make different persons. Suppose a Christian Platonist or a
Pythagorean should, upon God's having ended all his works of
creation the seventh day, think his soul hath existed ever since;
and should imagine it has revolved in several human bodies; as I
once met with one, who was persuaded his had been the soul of Socrates
(how reasonably I will not dispute; this I know, that in the post he
filled, which was no inconsiderable one, he passed for a very rational
man, and the press has shown that he wanted not parts or learning;)-
would any one say, that he, being not conscious of any of Socrates's
actions or thoughts, could be the same person with Socrates? Let any
one reflect upon himself, and conclude that he has in himself an
immaterial spirit, which is that which thinks in him, and, in the
constant change of his body keeps him the same: and is that which he
calls himself: let him also suppose it to be the same soul that was in
Nestor or Thersites, at the siege of Troy, (for souls being, as far as
we know anything of them, in their nature indifferent to any parcel of
matter, the supposition has no apparent absurdity in it), which it may
have been, as well as it is now the soul of any other man: but he
now having no consciousness of any of the actions either of Nestor
or Thersites, does or can he conceive himself the same person with
either of them? Can he be concerned in either of their actions?
attribute them to himself, or think them his own, more than the
actions of any other men that ever existed? So that this
consciousness, not reaching to any of the actions of either of those
men, he is no more one self with either of them than if the soul or
immaterial spirit that now informs him had been created, and began
to exist, when it began to inform his present body; though it were
never so true, that the same spirit that informed Nestor's or
Thersites' body were numerically the same that now informs his.
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