90 LIFE AND HABIT, 



Personal identity is barred at one end, in the com- 

 mon opinion, by birth, and at the other by death. 

 Before birth, a child cannot complain either by himself 

 or another, in such way as to set the law in motion ; 

 after death he is in like manner powerless to make 

 himself felt by society, except in so far as he can do 

 so by acts done before the breath has left his body. 

 At any point between birth and death he is liable, 

 either by himself or another, to affect his fellow-crea- 

 tures ; hence, no two other epochs can be found of 

 equal convenience for social purposes, and therefore 

 they have been seized by society as settling the whole 

 question of when personal identity begins and ends 

 society being rightly concerned with its own practical 

 convenience, rather than with the abstract truth con- 

 cerning its individual members. No one who is cap- 

 able of reflection will deny that the limitation of 

 personality is certainly arbitrary to a degree as regards 

 birth, nor yet that it is very possibly arbitrary as regards 

 death ; and as for intermediate points, no doubt it 

 would be more strictly accurate to say, " you are the 

 now phase of the person I met last night," or " you 

 are the being which has been evolved from the being 

 I met last night," than " you are the person I met 

 last night." But life is too short for the peri- 

 phrases which would crowd upon us from every quarter, 

 if we did not set our face against all that is under the 

 surface of things, unless, that is to say, the going 

 beneath the surface is, for some special chance of pro- 

 fit, excusable or capable of extenuation. 



