Identity of modes. 327 ridiculous. But it being a contradiction, that two or more should be one, identity and diverfity are relations and ways of comparing well-founded, and of use to the understanding. All other things being but modes or relations ultimately terminated in fubftances, the identity and diverfity of each particular exiftence of them too will be by the fame way determined: only as to things whofe exiftence is in fucceffion, fuch as are the actions of finite beings, v. g. motion and thought, both which confift in a continued train of fucceffion: concerning their diverfity, there can be no queftion: becaufe each perishing the moment it begins, they cannot exift in different times, or in different places, as permanent beings can at different times exift in diftant places; and therefore no motion or thought, confidered as at different times, can be the fame, each part thereof having a different beginning of existence. §. 3. From what has been faid, it is easy Principium to discover what is fo much inquired after, individuati the principium individuationis; and that, onis. it is plain, is exiftence itself, which determines a being of any fort to a particular time and place, incommunicable to two beings of the fame kind. This, though it seems easier to conceive in fimple fubftances or modes, yet when reflected on is not more difficult in compound ones, if care be taken to what it is applied: v. g. let us fuppofe an atom, i. e. a continued body under one immutable fuperficies, exifting in a determined time and place; it is evident that, confidered in any inftant of its existence, it is in that inftant the fame with itself. For being at that inftant what it is, and nothing else, it is the fame, and fo muft continue as long as its existence is continued; for so long it will be the fame, and no other. In like manner, if two or more atoms be joined together into the fame mafs, every one of thofe atoms will be the fame, by the foregoing rule: and whilft they exift united togethe, the mafs, confifting of the fame atoms, must be the fame mass, or the fame body, let the parts be ever fo differently jumbled. But if one of thefe atoms be Y 4 taken taken away, or one new one added, it is no longer the fame mafs, or the fame body. In the ftate of living creatures, their identity depends not on a mafs of the fame particles, but on fomething elfe. For in them the variation of great parcels of matters alter not the identity an oak growing from a plant to a great tree, and then lopped, is ftill the fame oak; and a colt grown up to a horfe, fometimes fat, fometimes lean, is all the while the fame horfe: though in both these cases, there may be a manifeft change of the parts; fo that truly they are not either of them the fame maffes of matter, though they be truly one of them the fame oak, and the other the fame horfe. The reafon whereof is, that in these two cafes, a mafs of matter, and a living body, identity is not applied to the fame thing. Identity of vegetables. §. 4. We must therefore confider wherein an oak differs from a mafs of matter, and that feems to me to be in this, that the one is only the cohefion of particles of matter any how united, the other fuch a difpofition of them as conftitutes the parts of an oak; and fuch an organization of thofe parts as is fit to receive and diftribute nourishment, fo as to continue and frame the wood, bark, and leaves, &c. of an oak, in which confifts the vegetable life. That being then one plant which has fuch an organization of parts in one coherent body partaking of one common life, it continues to be the fame plant as long as it partakes of the fame life, though that life be communicated to new particles of matter vitally united to the living plant, in a like continued organization conformable to that fort of plants. For this organization being at any one inftant in any one collection of matter, is in that particular concrete diftinguished from all other, and is that individual life which exifting conftantly from that moment both forwards and backwards, in the fame continuity of infenfibly fucceeding parts united to the living body of the plant, it has that identity, which makes the fame plant, and all the parts of it parts of the fame plant, during all the time that they exift united in that continued orga nization nization, which is fit to convey that common life to all the parts fo united. Identity of animals. §. 5. The cafe is not fo much different in brutes, but that any one may hence fee what makes an animal, and continues it the fame. Something we have like this in machines, and may ferve to illuftrate it. For example, what is a watch? It is plain it is nothing but a fit organization, or conftruction of parts, to a certain end, which when a fufficient force is added to it, it is capable to attain. If we would fuppofe this machine one continued body, all whofe organized parts were repaired, increased or diminished by a conftant addition or feparation of infenfible parts, with one common life, we fhould have fomething very much like the body of an animal; with this difference, that in an animal the fitness of the organization, and the motion wherein life confifts, begin together, the motion coming from within; but in machines, the force coming fenfibly from without, is often away when the organ is in order, and well fitted to receive it. §. 6. This alfo fhows wherein the idenIdentity of tity of the fame man confifts; viz. in no- man, thing but a participation of the fame continued life, by conftantly fleeting particles of matter, in fucceffion vitally united to the fame organized body. He that fhall place the identity of man in any thing elfe, but like that of other animals in one fitly organized body, taken in any one inftant, and from thence continued under one organization of life in feveral fucceffively fleeting particles of matter united to it, will find it hard to make an embryo, one of years, mad and fober, the fame man, by any fuppofition, that will not make it poffible for Seth, Ifmael, Socrates, Pilate, St. Austin, and Cæfar Borgia, to be the fame man. For if the identity of foul alone makes the fame man, and there be nothing in the nature of matter why the fame individual spirit may not be united to different bodies, it will be poffible that thofe men living in diftant ages, and of different tempers, may have been the fame man: which way of speaking muft be, from a very strange ufe ufe of the word man, applied to an idea, out of which body and shape are excluded. And that way of fpeaking would agree yet worse with the notions of thofe philofophers who allow of tranfmigration, and are of opinion that the fouls of men may, for their mifcarriages, be detruded into the bodies of beafts, as fit habitations, with organs fuited to the fatisfaction of their brutal inclinations. But yet I think, no-body could he be fure that the foul of Heliogabalus were in one of his hogs, would yet say that hog were a man or Heliogabalus. Identity fuit ed to the idea. §. 7. It is not therefore unity of fubftance that comprehends all forts of identity, or will determine it in every cafe: but to conceive and judge of it aright, we muft confider what idea the word it is applied to ftands for; it being one thing to be the fame fubftance, another the fame man, and a third the fame person, if perfon, man, and substance are three names ftanding for three different ideas; for fuch as is the idea belonging to that name, fuch must be the identity: which, if it had been a little more carefully attended to, would poffibly have prevented a great deal of that confufion, which often occurs about this matter, with no fmall feeming difficulties, efpecially concerning perfonal identity, which therefore we fhall in the next place a little confider. §. 8. An animal is a living organized Same man. body; and confequently the fame animal, as we have observed, is the fame continued life communicated to different particles of matter, as they happen fucceffively to be united to that organized living body. And whatever is talked of other definitions, ingenuous obfervation puts it paft doubt, that the idea in our minds, of which the found man in our mouths is the fign, is nothing else but of an animal of fuch a certain form: fince I think I may be confident, that whoever should fee a creature of his own fhape and make, though it had no more reafon all its life than a cat or a parrot, would call him still a man; or whoever fhould hear a cat or a parrot difcourfe, reason and philofophize, would call or think it nothing but a cat or a parrot; and fay, the one was a dull irrational man, and the other a very intelligent rational parrot. A relation we have in an author of great note is fufficient to countenance the fuppofition of a rational parrot. His words are : "I had a mind to know from prince Maurice's own "mouth the account of a common, but much credited ftory, that I heard fo often from many others, of "an old parrot he had in Brazil during his govern"ment there, that fpoke, and afked, and answered "common queftions like a reasonable creature: fo that "those of his train there generally concluded it to be "witchery or poffeffion; and one of his chaplains, who' "lived long afterwards in Holland, would never from "that time endure a parrot, but faid, they all had a "devil in them. I had heard many particulars of this "ftory, and affevered by people hard to be difcredited, "which made me afk prince Maurice what there was "of it. He faid, with his ufual plainnefs and dryness "in talk, there was fomething true, but a great deal "falfe of what had been reported. I defired to know "of him what there was of the firft? He told me fhort "and coldly, that he had heard of fuch an old parrot "when he had been at Brazil; and though he believed "nothing of it, and it was a good way off, yet he had "fo much curiofity as to fend for it: that it was a very great and a very old one, and when it came first "into the room where the prince was, with a great many Dutchmen about him, it faid prefently, What "a company of white men are here! They afked it "what it thought that man was, pointing to the prince? "It anfwered, fome general or other; when they brought it close to him, he afked it, † D'ou venez • Memoirs of what paffed in Chriftendom from 1672 to 1679, P. 2. + Whence come ye? It anfwered, From Marinnan. The Prince, To whom do you belong? The parrot, To a Portuguese. Prince, What do you there? Parrot, I look after the chickens. The Prince laughed, and faid, You look after the chickens? The parrot answered, Yes, I, and I'know well enough how to do it. |