20. Absolute oblivion separates what is thus forgotten from the person, but not from the man.
But yet possibly it
will still be objected,--Suppose I wholly lose the memory of some parts of my life, beyond a possibility of
retrieving them, so that perhaps I shall never be conscious of them again; yet am I not the same person that did
those actions, had those thoughts that I once was conscious of, though I have now forgot them? To which I
answer, that we must here take notice what the word I is applied to; which, in this case, is the man only. And the
same man being presumed to be the same person, I is easily here supposed to stand also for the same person. But
if it be possible for the same man to have distinct incommunicable consciousness at different times, it is past
doubt the same man would at different times make different persons; which, we see, is the sense of mankind in the
solemnest declaration of their opinions, human laws not punishing the mad man for the sober man's actions, nor
the sober man for what the mad man did,--thereby making them two persons: which is somewhat explained by
our way of speaking in English when we say such an one is "not himself," or is "beside himself"; in which
phrases it is insinuated, as if those who now, or at least first used them, thought that self was changed; the
selfsame person was no longer in that man.
