1. Wherein identity consists.
Another occasion the mind often takes of comparing, is the very being of things,
when, considering anything as existing at any determined time and place, we compare it with itself existing at
another time, and thereon form the ideas of identity and diversity. When we see anything to be in any place in any
instant of time, we are sure (be it what it will) that it is that very thing, and not another which at that same time
exists in another place, how like and undistinguishable soever it may be in all other respects: and in this consists
identity, when the ideas it is attributed to vary not at all from what they were that moment wherein we consider
their former existence, and to which we compare the present. For we never finding, nor conceiving it possible,
that two things of the same kind should exist in the same place at the same time, we rightly conclude, that,
whatever exists anywhere at any time, excludes all of the same kind, and is there itself alone. When therefore we
demand whether anything be the same or no, it refers always to something that existed such a time in such a place,
which it was certain, at that instant, was the same with itself, and no other. From whence it follows, that one thing
cannot have two beginnings of existence, nor two things one beginning; it being impossible for two things of the
same kind to be or exist in the same instant, in the very same place; or one and the same thing in different places.
That, therefore, that had one beginning, is the same thing; and that which had a different beginning in time and
place from that, is not the same, but diverse. That which has made the difficulty about this relation has been the
little care and attention used in having precise notions of the things to which it is attributed.
