PERSONAL IDENTITY. 79 



Moreover, as the component parts of our identity 

 change from moment to moment, our personality 

 becomes a thing dependent upon time present, \vhich 

 has no logical existence, but lives only upon the suffer- 

 ance of times past and future, slipping out of our 

 hands into the domain of one or other of these two 

 claimants the moment we try to apprehend it. And 

 not only is our personality as fleeting as the present 

 moment, but the parts which compose it blend some 

 of them so imperceptibly into, and are so inextricably 

 linked on to, outside things which clearly form no 

 part of our personality, that when we tiy to bring 

 ourselves to book, and determine wherein we consist, 

 or to draw a line as to where we begin or end, we find 

 ourselves completely baffled. There is nothing but 

 fusion and confusion. 



Putting theology on one side, and dealing only with 

 the common daily experience of mankind, our body 

 is certainly part of our personality. With the de- 

 struction of our bodies, our personality, as far as we 

 can follow it, comes to a full stop ; and with every 

 modification of them it is correspondingly modified. 

 But what are the limits of our bodies ? They are 

 composed of parts, some of them so unessential as to 

 be hardly included in personality at all, and to be 

 separable from ourselves without perceptible effect, as 

 the hair, nails, and daily waste of tissue. Again, other 

 parts are very important, as our hands, feet, arms, legs, 

 &c., but still are no essential parts of our " self " or 

 "soul," which continues to exist in spite of their 

 amputation. Other parts, as the brain, heart, and 



