PERSONAL IDENTITY. 87 



moment ; " in wliicli case, he continues, our present self 

 would not be " in reality the same with the self of 

 yesterday, but another like self or person coming up 

 in its room and mistaken for it, to which another self 

 will succeed to-morrow." This view the Bishop pro- 

 ceeds to reduce to absurdity by saying, " It must be a 

 fallacy upon ourselves to charge our present selves 

 with anything we did, or to imagine our present selves 

 interested in anything which befell us yesterday ; or 

 that our present self will be interested in what will 

 befall us to-morrow. This, I say, must follow, for if 

 the self or person of to-day and that of to-morrow are 

 not the same, but only like persons, the person of to- 

 day is really no more interested in what will befall 

 the person of to-morrow than in what will befall any 

 other person. It may be thought, perhaps, that this 

 is not a just representation of the opinion we are 

 speaking of, because those who maintain it allow that 

 a person is the same as far back as his remembrance 

 reaches. And indeed they do use the words identity 

 and same person. Nor will language permit these 

 words to be laid aside, since, if they were, there must 

 be I know not what ridiculous periphrasis substituted 

 in the room of them. But they cannot consistently 

 with themselves mean that the person is really the 

 same. For it is self-evident that the personality 

 cannot be really the same, if, as they expressly assert, 

 that in which it consists is not the same. And as con- 

 sistently with themselves they cannot, so I think it 

 appears they do not mean that the person is really the 

 same, but only that he is so in a fictitious sense ; in such 



