PERSONAL IDENTITY. 85 



born and the man of twenty. Yet there is no hesita- 

 tion about admitting sameness of personality between 

 these two last. 



On the other hand, if that hazy contradiction in 

 terms, "personal identity," be once allowed to retreat 

 behind the threshold of the womb, it has eluded us 

 once for all. What is true of one hour before birth is 

 true of two, and so on till we get back to the impreg- 

 nate ovum, which may fairly claim to have been person- 

 ally identical with the man of eighty into which it 

 ultimately developed, in spite of the fact that there is 

 no particle of same matter nor sense of continuity 

 between them, nor recognised community of instinct, 

 nor indeed of anything which goes to the making up 

 of that which we call identity. 



There is far more of all these things common to the 

 impregnate ovum and the ovum immediately before 

 impregnation, or again between the impregnate ovum, 

 and both the ovum before impregnation and the 

 spermatozoon which impregnated it. Nor, if we admit 

 personal identity between the ovum and the octogena- 

 rian, is there any sufficient reason why we should not 

 admit it between the impregnate ovum and the two 

 factors of which it is composed, which two factors are 

 but offshoots from two distinct personalities, of which 

 they are as much part as the apple is of the apple-tree; 

 so that an impregnate ovum cannot without a violation 

 of first principles be debarred from claiming personal 

 identity with both its parents, and hence, by an easy 

 chain of reasoning, with each of the impregnate ova 

 from which its parents were developed. 



