be divided into two persons, or into halves or quarters of a person,
is true; because the mind itself is indivisible, and the presence of
this one indivisible mind is essential to personality. But, though
essential to personality in man, mind is not all, in the popular sense
of the word at least, which this comprehends. Thus, if, according
to the system of metempsychosis, we were to suppose the mind, which
animates any of our friends, to be the same mind, which animated Homer
or Plato,--though we should have no scruple, in asserting the identity
of the mind itself, in this corporeal transmigration,--there is no one,
I conceive, who would think himself justifiable, in point of accuracy,
in saying of Plato and his friend, that they were as exactly, in every
respect, _the same person_, as if no _metempsychosis_ whatever had
intervened. It does not follow from this, as Dr Reid very strangely
supposes, that a leg or arm, if it had any relation to our personality,
would, after amputation, be liable to a part of our engagements, or
be entitled to a share of our merit or demerit; for the engagement,
and the moral merit or demerit, belong not to the _body_, but to the
_mind_, which we believe to continue precisely the same, after the
amputation, as before it. This, however, is a question merely as to
the comparative propriety of a term, and as such, therefore, it is
unnecessary to dwell upon it. It is of much more importance, to proceed
to the consideration of the actual identity of the mind, whether we
term it simply _mental_ or _personal_ identity.
“That there is something undoubtedly which _thinks_,” says Lord
Shaftesbury, “our very doubt itself and scrupulous thought evinces.
But in what subject that thought resides, and how _that_ subject
is continued _one and the same_, so as to answer constantly to the
supposed train of thoughts or reflections, which seem to run so
harmoniously through a long course of life, with the same relation
still to one single and self-same person, this is not a matter so
easily or hastily decided, by those who are nice self-examiners, or
searchers after truth and certainty.
“'Twill not, in this respect, be sufficient for us to use the seeming
logic of a famous[46] modern, and say, ‘_We think_; therefore _we
are_.’ Which is a notably invented saying, after the model of that like
philosophical proposition, that ‘_What is, is_.’ Miraculously argued!
If ‘_I am, I am_.’ Nothing more certain! For the _ego_ or I being
established in the first part of the proposition, the _ergo_, no doubt,
must hold it good in the latter. But the question is, ‘What constitutes
the _we_ or _I_?’ And, ‘Whether the I of this instant be the same with
that of any instant preceding, or to come.’ For we have nothing but
memory to warrant us, and memory may be false. We may believe we have
thought and reflected thus or thus; but we may be mistaken. We may be
conscious of that, as truth, which perhaps was no more than dream; and
we may be conscious of that as a past dream, which perhaps was never
before so much as dreamt of.
“This is what metaphysicians mean, when they say, ‘That _identity_ can
be proved only by _consciousness_; but that consciousness withal may be
as well false as real, in respect of what is past.’ So that the same
successional _we_ or _I_ must remain still, on this account, undecided.
“To the force of this reasoning I confess I must so far submit, as to
declare that for my own part, I take my being _upon trust_. Let others
philosophize as they are able; I shall admire their strength, when,
upon this topic, they have refuted what able metaphysicians object, and
Pyrrhonists plead in their own behalf.
“Meanwhile, there is no impediment, hinderance, or suspension of
action, on account of these wonderfully refined speculations. Argument
and debate go on still. Conduct is settled. Rules and measures are
given out, and received. Nor do we scruple to act as resolutely upon
the mere supposition that _we are_, as if we had effectually proved
it a thousand times, to the full satisfaction of our metaphysical or
Pyrrhonean antagonist.”[47]
In stating the objections, that may be urged against our mental
identity, by such metaphysical or Pyrrhonean antagonists, as those of
whom Lord Shaftesbury speaks, I shall endeavour to exhibit the argument
in as strong a light as possible, and in a manner that appears to me
in some measure, new. It is surely unnecessary for me to warn you,
that the argument, however specious, is a sophistical one; and the
nature of the peculiar sophistry which it involves shall be afterwards
pointed out to you. But I conceive it to be most important, in teaching
you to reflect for yourselves,--by far the most important lesson
which you can be taught,--that you should be accustomed to consider
the force of objections that may be urged, as clearly by the force
of that surer evidence which they oppose,--and that even sophistry
itself, when it is to be exhibited and confuted, should, therefore,
always be exhibited fairly. We pay truth a very easy homage, when we
content ourselves with despising her adversaries. The duty which we
owe to her is of a more manly kind. It is to gird ourselves for the
battle,--to fit us for overcoming those adversaries, whenever they
shall dare to present themselves in array; and this we cannot do, with
absolute confidence, unless we know well the sort of arms, which they
may use, strong or feeble as those arms may be. I can have no fear,
that any argument of this kind, in whatever manner it may be stated,
can have the slightest influence on your conviction; because it is
directly opposed by a principle of our nature, which is paramount to
all reasoning. We believe our identity, as one mind, in our feelings of
to-day and our feelings of yesterday, as indubitably as we believe that
the fire, which burned us yesterday, would, in the same circumstances,
burn us to-day,--not from reasoning, but from a principle of instant
and irresistible belief, such as gives to reasoning itself all its
validity. As Lord Shaftesbury justly says, “We act as resolutely, upon
the mere supposition that _we are_, as if we had effectually proved it
a thousand times.”
To identity, it may be said, it is necessary that the _qualities_ be
the same. That of which the qualities are different, cannot be the
same; and the only mode of discovering whether a substance have the
same or different qualities, is to observe, how it affects and is
affected by other substances. It is recognized by us as the same, or,
at least, as perfectly similar, when, in two corresponding series of
changes, the same substances affect _it_ in the same manner, and _it_
affects, in the same manner, the same substances; and when either the
same substances do not affect it in the same manner, or it does not
affect, in the same manner, the same substances, we have no hesitation
in considering it as _different_. Thus, if a white substance,
resembling exactly, in every external appearance, a lump of sugar,
do not _melt_ when exposed to the action of boiling water, we do not
regard it as _sugar_, because the water does not act on it as we have
uniformly known it to act on that substance; or if the same white lump,
in every other respect resembling sugar, affect our taste as _bitter_
or acrid rather than sweet, we immediately, in like manner, cease to
consider it as sugar, because it does not act upon our nerves of taste
in the same manner as sugar acts upon them. The complete similarity, in
other respects, is far from sufficient to make us alter our judgment;
a single circumstance of manifest difference, in its mode either of
acting upon other substances, or of being acted upon by them, being
sufficient to destroy the effect of a thousand manifest resemblances.
Let this test of identity, then, it may be said, be applied to the
_mind_, at different periods, if the test be allowed to be a just one;
and let it be seen, whether, in the series of changes in which it acts
or is acted upon, the phenomena precisely correspond in every case.
If the same objects do _not_ act upon it in the same manner, it must
then be _different_, according to the very definition to which we are
supposed to have assented.--You, of course, understand, that I am at
present only assuming the character of an objector, and that I state an
argument, the principle of which you will afterwards find to be false.
When we compare the listless inactivity of the infant, slumbering,
from the moment at which he takes his milky food, to the moment at
which he awakes to require it again, with the restless energies of
that mighty being which he is to become, in his maturer years,
pouring truth after truth in rapid and dazzling profusion, upon the
world, or grasping in his single hand the destiny of empires, how few
are the circumstances of resemblance which we can trace, of all that
intelligence which is afterwards to be displayed, how little _more_
is seen, than what serves to give feeble motion to the mere machinery
of life. What prophetic eye can venture to look beyond the period of
distinct utterance, and discern that variety of character by which
even boyhood is marked, far less are the intellectual and moral growth
of the years that follow--the genius, before whose quick glance the
errors and prejudices, which all the ages and nations of mankind have
received as truths, are to disappear--the political wisdom, with which,
in his calm and silent meditations, he is to afford more security
to his country than could be given to it by a thousand armies, and
which, with a single thought, is to spread protection and happiness
to the most distant lands--or that ferocious ambition, with which, in
unfortunate circumstances of power, he is perhaps to burst the whole
frame of civil society, and to stamp, through every age, the deep and
dark impression of his existence, in the same manner as he leaves
on the earth which he has desolated, the track of his sanguinary
footsteps. The cradle has its equality almost as the grave. Talents,
imbecilities, virtues, vices, slumber in it together, undistinguished;
and it is well that it is so, since, to those who are most interested
in the preservation of a life that would be helpless but for their
aid, it leaves those delightful illusions which more than repay their
anxiety and fatigue, and allows them to hope, for a single being, every
thing which it is possible for the race of man to become. If clearer
presages of the future mind were then discoverable, how large a portion
of human happiness would be destroyed by this single circumstance! What
pleasure could the mother feel, in her most delightful of offices, if
she knew that she was nursing into strength, powers, which were to be
exerted for the misery of that great or narrow circle, in which they
were destined to move, and which to her were to be a source, not of
blessing, but of grief, and shame, and despair!
“These shall the fury passions tear,
The vultures of the mind,”
says Gray, on thinking of a group of happy children;
“For see, how all around them wait,
The ministers of human fate,
And black Misfortune's baleful train;
Oh! shew them, where in ambush stand,
To seize their prey, the murd'rous band!
Oh! tell them, they are men!”
ODE III.
To tell them they are men, though they were capable of understanding
it, even in this sense of the word, would not communicate information
so melancholy or so astonishing to themselves, as, by breaking too soon
that dream of expectation, which is not to last forever, but which
fulfils the benevolent purpose of nature while it lasts, it would
communicate to the parent who watches over them, and who sees in them
only those pure virtues, and that happiness as pure, which are perhaps
more than the nature of man admits, and which, at least in the case
before her, are never to be realized.
Is the mind, then, in infancy, and in mature life, precisely the same,
when in the one case, so many prominent diversities of character force
themselves upon the view, and, in the other case, so little appears to
distinguish the future ornament of mankind, from him who is afterwards
“To eat his glutton meal with greedy haste,
Nor know the hand which feeds him?”
If we apply the test of identity, do we find that the same objects, in
these different periods, act upon the mind in exactly the same manner;
and are its own feelings, in the successive trains, intellectual and
moral, of which they form a part, attended with consequents exactly the
same?
_Every age_,--if we may speak of many ages, in the few years of human
life,--seems to be marked with a distinct character. Each has its
peculiar objects that excite lively affections; and in each, exertion
is excited by affections, which, in other periods, terminate, without
inducing active desire. The boy finds a world in less space than
that which bounds his visible horizon; he wanders over his range of
field, and exhausts his strength in pursuit of objects, which, in the
years that follow, are seen only to be neglected; while, _to him_,
the objects that are afterwards to absorb his whole soul, are as
indifferent as the objects of his present passions are destined then to
appear.
In the progress of life, though we are often gratified with the
prospect of benevolence increasing as its objects increase, and of
powers rising over the greatness of their past attainments, this
gratification is not always ours. Not slight changes of character
only appear, which require our attentive investigation to trace them,
but, in innumerable cases, complete and striking contrasts press, of
themselves, upon view. How many melancholy opportunities must every
one have had in witnessing the progress of intellectual decay, and
the coldness that steals upon the once benevolent heart! We quit our
country, perhaps at an early period of life, and, after an absence
of many years, we return with all the remembrances of past pleasure,
which grow more tender as we approach their objects. We eagerly seek
him, to whose paternal voice we have been accustomed to listen, with
the same reverence as if its predictions had possessed oracular
certainty,--who first led us into knowledge, and whose image has been
constantly joined in our mind, with all that veneration which does not
forbid love. We find him sunk, perhaps, in the imbecility of idiotism,
unable to recognize us--ignorant alike of the past and of the future,
and living only in the sensibility of animal gratification. We seek
the favourite companion of our childhood, whose gentleness of heart we
have often witnessed when we have wept together over the same ballad,
or in the thousand little incidents that called forth our mutual
compassion, in those years when compassion requires so little to call
it forth. We find him hardened into man, meeting us scarcely with the
cold hypocrisy of dissembled friendship--in his general relations to
the world, careless of the misery which _he_ is not to feel--and, if
he ever think of the happiness of others, seeking it as an instrument,
not as an end. When we thus observe all that made us _one_, and gave
an heroic interest even to our childish adventures, absorbed in the
chillness of selfish enjoyment, do we truly recognize in him the
same unaltered friend, from whom we were accustomed to regret our
separation, and do we use only a metaphor of little meaning, when we
say of him, that he is become a different person, and that his mind
and character are changed? In what does the identity consist? The same
objects no longer act upon him in the same manner; the same views of
things are no longer followed by similar approbation or disapprobation,
grief, joy, admiration, disgust; and if we affirm _that substance_ to
be, in the strictest sense of identity, the _same_ on which, in two
corresponding series of phenomena, the same objects act differently,
while itself also acts differently on the same objects; in short, in
which the antecedents being the same, the consequents are different,
and, the consequents being the same, the antecedents are different,
what definition of absolute diversity can we give, with which this
affirmation of absolute identity may not be equally consistent?
“Behold the child, by nature's kindly law,
Pleas'd with a rattle, tickled with a straw;
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite;
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage;
And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age.
Pleas'd with this bauble still, as that before;
Till, tir'd, he sleeps,--and life's poor play is o'er.”[48]
The supposed test of identity, when applied to the mind in these cases,
completely fails. It neither affects, nor is affected, in the same
manner, in the same circumstances. It, therefore, if the test be a just
one, is _not_ the same identical mind.
This argument against the identity of the mind, drawn from the
occasional striking contrasts of character in the same individual at
different periods of life, or when, by great changes of fortune, he may
have been placed suddenly in circumstances remarkably different, must,
in some degree, have forced itself upon every one who has been at all
accustomed to reflect; and yet, in no one instance, I may safely say,
can it have produced conviction even for a moment. I have stated it
to you, without attempting to lessen its force by any allusion to the
fallacy on which it is founded; because the nature of this fallacy is
afterwards to be fully considered by us.
There is another argument that may be urged against the identity of the
sentient and thinking principle, which has at least equal semblance of
force, though it does not occur so readily, because it does not proceed
on those general and lasting changes of character with which every one
must be struck, but on the passing phenomena of the moment, which are
not inconsistent with a continuance of the _same general character_,
and which, as common to all mankind, and forming, indeed, the whole
customary and familiar series of our thoughts and emotions, excite no
astonishment when we look back on them in the order of their succession.
The mere diversity of our feelings at different moments, it may be
said, is of itself incompatible with the strict and absolute _unity_
which is supposed to belong to the thinking principle. If joy and
sorrow, such as every one has felt, be different, that which is joyful,
and that which is sorrowful, cannot be precisely the same. On the
supposition of complete unity and permanence of the thinking principle,
nothing is added to it, nothing is taken away from it; and, as it
has no parts, no internal change of elementary composition can take
place in it. But _that_ to which nothing is added, from which nothing
is taken away, and which has no parts to vary their own relative
positions and affinities, is so strictly the same, it may be said, that
it would surely be absurd to predicate of it any diversity whatever.
Joy and sorrow imply an unquestionable diversity of some kind; and
if this diversity cannot be predicated of that substance which is
precisely the same, without addition, subtraction, or any internal
change of composition whatever, that which is joyful, and that which
is sorrowful, cannot have absolute identity; or if we affirm, that a
diversity, so striking as to form an absolute _contrast_, is yet not
inconsistent with complete and permanent unity and identity, we may,
in like manner, affirm, that a substance which is hard, heavy, blue,
transparent,--which unites with acids, not, with alkalies,--and which
is volatilizable at a low temperature,--is precisely the same substance
as that, which is soft, light, green, opaque,--which unites with
alkalies, not with acids,--and which is absolutely infusible and fixed
in the highest temperature to which we can expose it.
I have thus endeavoured to place, in the strongest possible light, the
most imposing arguments which I can conceive to be urged against the
_permanent identity_ of the sentient and thinking principle, that,
in combating even _Sophistry_ itself, you may learn, as I have said,
to combat with it on equal ground, and assume no advantage but that
irresistible advantage which Truth must always afford to him who is the
combatant of Error.
The positive evidence of the identity of the mind I shall proceed to
consider in my next Lecture.
FOOTNOTES:
[44] Mart. Scrib. chap. vii.--Pope's Works, _edit._ 1757, v. vii. p.
82-84.
[45] Essays on the Intellectual Powers, Essay III. chap. iv.--v. 1. p.
341. _Edit. Ed._ 1808.
[46] Monsieur Des Cartes. _Shaftesb._
[47] Shaftesbury's Characteristics, vol. iii. p. 172-174. _Edit._ 1745.
[48] Pope's Essay on Man, Ep. II. v. 275-282.
LECTURE XIII.
ON THE DIRECT EVIDENCE OF MENTAL IDENTITY; AND OBJECTIONS ANSWERED.
My last Lecture, Gentlemen, was employed in considering the great
question of the Identity of the Mind, as one and permanent, amid all
the infinite variety of our feelings; and particularly, in stating the
two most forcible objections, which I can imagine to be urged against
this identity,--_one_ founded on the striking contrasts, intellectual
and moral, which the same mind exhibits in different periods of life,
and in different circumstances of fortune,--the _other_, more abstract,
and, therefore, less obvious, but not less forcible, founded on the
mere diversity of our temporary feelings, as itself inconsistent with
identity, at least with that strict and absolute identity, to which,
as in the case of the mind, nothing can have been added,--from which
nothing can have been taken away,--and which, by its very nature, as
simple and indivisible, must have been incapable of any elementary
change.
Since the exposure of the fallacy, on which these objections are
founded, would, however, afford only a sort of _negative_ evidence of
that great truth which they oppose, it will be of advantage, before
entering on an examination of the objections themselves, to state, in
the first place, the nature of that _positive_ evidence, which does
not, indeed, lead us to the belief of the unity and permanence of our
spiritual being, by that slow process which is denominated reasoning,
but constitutes to us, primarily and directly, an impossibility of
disbelieving it. I do this the more readily, from the opportunity
which it gives of making you acquainted with the paramount importance
of those principles of _intuitive belief_, which are essential to
philosophy in all its forms, as they are physically essential, indeed,
to the very preservation of our animal existence; and which the rash
and unphilosophic extension of them by one class of philosophers, and
the equally unphilosophic misapprehension of them by other writers
who controverted them, have rendered more necessary, than it would
otherwise have been, to state to you with precision.
Of these _first truths_, as they have been termed, the subject, which
we are at present considering, affords one of the most striking
examples. The belief of our identity is not the result of any series of
propositions, but arises immediately, in certain circumstances, from
a principle of thought, as essential to the very nature of the mind,
as its powers of perception or memory, or as the power of reasoning
itself, on the essential validity of which, and consequently on the
intuitive belief of some first truth on which it is founded, every
objection to the force of these very truths themselves must ultimately
rest. To object is to argue; and to argue is to assert the validity
of argument, and, therefore, of the primary evidence, from which the
evidence of each succeeding proposition of the argument flows. To
object to the authority of such primary intuitive belief, would thus be
to reason against reason,--to affirm and deny at the same moment,--and
to own that the very arguments which we urge are unworthy of being
received and credited.