Memoranda for Materialists 69 



Hume says, quoted by Huxley with approval 

 in the work already cited, p. 194 : 



" It is impossible to attach any definite meaning 

 to the word c substance/ when employed for the 

 hypothetical substratum of soul and matter .... 

 If it be said that our personal identity requires 

 the assumption of a substance which remains the 

 same while the accidents of perception shift and 

 change, the question arises what is meant by 

 personal identity ? .... A plant or an animal, 

 in the course of its existence, from the condition 

 of an egg or seed to the end of life, remains the 

 same neither in form, nor in structure, nor in 

 the matter of which it is composed : every 

 attribute it possesses is constantly changing, and 

 yet we say that it is always one and the same 

 individual" (p. 194). 



And in his own preface to the ' Hume ' 

 volume Huxley expresses himself forcibly 

 thus, equally antagonistic as was his wont 

 to both ostensible friend and ostensible foe, 

 as soon as they got off what he considered 

 the straight path : 



" That which it may be well for us not to forget 

 is, that the first-recorded judicial murder of a scien- 

 tific thinker [Socrates] was compassed and effected, 

 not by a despot, nor by priests, but was brought 

 about by eloquent demagogues .... Clear 



