272 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY 



For all we know the properties of the stone may be useful to the 

 stone, and for all we know the stone may be conscious and rational, 

 but these words mean nothing to us ; although we can see clearly 

 that the distinctive properties of living things are useful to them or 

 to their species. If it is said that words which mean nothing are 

 nonsense, and that we are not to talk nonsense, we must answer that 

 no honest confession of ignorance can be nonsense, and that the bur- 

 den of proving he is not talking nonsense rests with him who asserts 

 that stones are not conscious. 



So far as I am aware Butler is the only one of the older writers 

 on natural theology who perceived that the responsive actions of 

 living things prove that all living things have personal identity; 

 and, whether he be the first or not, his reasoning seems conclusive, 

 although modern science cannot permit him to escape any of the 

 consequences of this admission by asserting that trees are not living 

 things. 



"Consider," he says, "a living being now existing, and which 

 has existed for any time alive. This being must have done . . . 

 what it has done . . . formerly, as really as it does . . . what it 

 does . . . this instant. All these actions . . . are actions ... of 

 the same living being. And they are so prior to all consideration 

 of its remembering or forgetting ; since remembering and forgetting 

 can make no alteration in the truth of past matters of fact. And 

 suppose this being endowed with limited powers of knowledge and 

 memory, there is no more difficulty in conceiving it to have the 

 power of knowing itself to be the same living being which it was 

 some time ago, of remembering some of its actions, sufferings, and 

 enjoyments, and forgetting others, than in conceiving it to know, 

 or remember or forget anything else." ^ 



If Butler is right, if consciousness of personal identity does 

 not make but presupposes personal identity, we may consider the 

 continued existence of living things quite apart from the questior 

 whether they know their continued existence; but personal iden 

 tity is, so far, a phenomenon, a part of the order of objectiv 

 nature, which may be studied, like other natural phenomena, b}! 



1 The reader who is familiar with Butler will note that the words I have omitted aftei 

 ** done," and in other places are " suffered and enjoyed," for the argument does not seem t 

 demand any opinion as to the extent of the parallel between life and enjoyment and sufferin 



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