I 



SELF-IDENTITY DEPENDENT ON MEMORY. 



sonal immortality ; i.e., it must involve in some sort 

 the persistence of the ** I " which in this life thinks, 

 and feels, and wills. It must preserve our personal 

 identity,/.^., there must be continuity of consciousness 

 between the Self of this life and of the next. The 

 Buddhist doctrine of ^' Karma,'' of a person who is 

 the resultant of one's actions, but does not share 

 any part of one's consciousness, is a miserable com- 

 promise between the desires to deny the eternity 

 of personal suffering (for to Buddhism to exist is to 

 suffer), and to retain the moral stimulus of a belief in 

 a future life. But it falls between two stools, and 

 does not satisfy the conditions of a genuine future 

 life. For it is impossible to regard the person who 

 inherits one's Karma as identical with oneself, or 

 to feel a responsible interest in his fate. His con- 

 nection with the man whose Karma moulds his 

 character and predestines his circumstances seems 

 purely arbitrary, and due to a tyrannous constitution 

 of things whose procedures we are not called upon 

 to endorse. 



And, to a less degree, the same defect of failing 

 adequately to preserve the sense of personal identity 

 in its doctrines of the future life, is observable also 

 in the current religious eschatology, and is probably 

 one of the chief reasons of its practical ineffective- 

 ness. We are led to think of the breach in con- 

 tinuity as too absolute, and feel little real concern 

 in the angel or demon whom the catastrophe of our 

 death produces in another world. 



If, then, a future life without self-identity is a 

 meaningless mockery, let us inquire on what self- 

 identity depends. And the answer seems plain 

 that it primarily depends on nothing else than 

 me?nory. It is only by means of memory that we 



