18. Persons, not substances, the objects of reward and punishment.
In this personal identity is founded all the right
and justice of reward and punishment; happiness and misery being that for which every one is concerned for
himself, and not mattering what becomes of any substance, not joined to, or affected with that consciousness. For,
as it is evident in the instance I gave but now, if the consciousness went along with the little finger when it was
cut off, that would be the same self which was concerned for the whole body yesterday, as making part of itself,
whose actions then it cannot but admit as its own now. Though, if the same body should still live, and
immediately from the separation of the little finger have its own peculiar consciousness, whereof the little finger
knew nothing, it would not at all be concerned for it, as a part of itself, or could own any of its actions, or have
any of them imputed to him.
