14. Whether, the same immaterial substance remaining, there can be two persons.
As to the second part of the
question, Whether the same immaterial substance remaining, there may be two distinct persons; which question
seems to me to be built on this,--Whether the same immaterial being, being conscious of the action of its past
duration, may be wholly stripped of all the consciousness of its past existence, and lose it beyond the power of
ever retrieving it again: and so as it were beginning a new account from a new period, have a consciousness that
cannot reach beyond this new state. All those who hold pre-existence are evidently of this mind; since they allow
the soul to have no remaining consciousness of what it did in that pre-existent state, either wholly separate from
body, or informing any other body; and if they should not, it is plain experience would be against them. 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. For this would no more make him the same person with
Nestor, than if some of the particles of matter that were once a part of Nestor were now a part of this man; the
same immaterial substance, without the same consciousness, no more making the same person, by being united to
any body, than the same particle of matter, without consciousness, united to any body, makes the same person.
But let him once find himself conscious of any of the actions of Nestor, he then finds himself the same person
with Nestor.
