11. Personal identity.
This being premised, to find wherein personal identity consists, we must consider what
person stands for;--which, I think, is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider
itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness
which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it: it being impossible for any one to
perceive without perceiving that he does perceive. When we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will
anything, we know that we do so. Thus it is always as to our present sensations and perceptions: and by this every
one is to himself that which he calls self:--it not being considered, in this case, whether the same self be
continued in the same or divers substances. For, since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that
which makes every one to be what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things,
in this alone consists personal identity, i.e., the sameness of a rational being: and as far as this consciousness can
be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person; it is the same self
now it was then; and it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was done.
