For, whatsoever any substance has thought or done, which I
cannot recollect, and by my consciousness make my own thought and
action, it will no more belong to me, whether a part of me thought
or did it, than if it had been thought or done by any other immaterial
being anywhere existing.
25. Consciousness unites substances, material or spiritual, with the
same personality. I agree, the more probable opinion is, that this
consciousness is annexed to, and the affection of, one individual
immaterial substance.
But let men, according to their diverse hypotheses, resolve of
that as they please. This every intelligent being, sensible of
happiness or misery, must grant- that there is something that is
himself, that he is concerned for, and would have happy; that this
self has existed in a continued duration more than one instant, and
therefore it is possible may exist, as it has done, months and years
to come, without any certain bounds to be set to its duration; and may
be the same self, by the same consciousness continued on for the
future. And thus, by this consciousness he finds himself to be the
same self which did such and such an action some years since, by which
he comes to be happy or miserable now. In all which account of self,
the same numerical substance is not considered as making the same
self, but the same continued consciousness, in which several
substances may have been united, and again separated from it, which,
whilst they continued in a vital union with that wherein this
consciousness then resided, made a part of that same self.
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