196 HUME ix 



must be supposed to underlie the qualities of 

 matter? 



Again, if it be said that our personal identity 

 requires the assumption of a substance which 

 remains the same while the accidents of perception 

 shift and change, the question arises what is 

 meant by personal identity? 



" For my part," says Hume, " when I enter most inti- 

 mately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some 

 particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or 

 shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch 

 myself at any time without a perception, and never can ob- 

 serve anything but the perception. When my perceptions 

 are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so long am I 

 insensible of myself, and may be truly said not to exist. 

 And were all my perceptions removed by death, and I could 

 neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate, after the 

 dissolution of my body, I should be entirely annihilated, 

 nor do I conceive what is further requisite to make me a per- 

 fect nonentity. If any one, upon serious and unprejudiced re- 

 flection, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must 

 confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow 

 him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that 

 we are essentially different in this particular. He may 

 perhaps perceive something simple and continued which 

 he calls himself, though I am certain there is no such prin- 

 ciple in me. 



" But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I 

 may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are 

 nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, 

 which succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity, 

 and are in a perpetual flux and movement. . . . The mind 

 is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively 

 make their appearance, pass, repass, glide away, and mingle 

 in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is 



