Pleasant Ways in Science. 461 



PLEASANT WAYS IN SCIENCE. 

 No. III. — Identity and Change. 



To be the same, and yet different, is one of the curious 

 problems which science presents to us. It appeals to us when 

 we encounter the question of personal identity, and are certain 

 that the old man passing away from us down the vale of time 

 is the same individual that, eighty years ago, commenced his 

 visible being under the care of nurses, who supplied the wants 

 of infancy, enabled him to grow to childhood, to youth, to 

 manhood, to maturity, and then to old age. All through life 

 identity and change are exhibited to us. Each breath takes 

 away a portion of the being that was, and brings into our 

 organization a portion of the being that is to become ; and yet 

 we feel there is a larger and broader identity of individuality 

 preserved throughout all these changes than can be accounted 

 for upon any principle of discarding physical organization from 

 our reckoning, and looking only to the spiritual essence that 

 has pervaded and animated each stage. Whatever may be the 

 nature or the mode of connection of mind and spirit, they 

 seem so bound together, that all the gradations of our being 

 may be compendiously spoken of as parts of the one 

 enduring I. 



Psychologically, the I may be conceived to begin with its 

 own consciousness, and to endure so long as that consciousness 

 remains. If, indeed, as some have supposed, consciousness 

 went to sleep for ages, and then revived, only a prolonged 

 slumber would have affected the I, and that slumber of ages 

 might seem to it only like a momentary interruption of those 

 processes of thought, feeling, and sensation by which we know 

 that we exist. 



We cannot look upon our physical organization as nothing 

 more than a machine which our mind or soul plays upon like 

 an instrument, or receives messages from like a king. It may 

 perish while we remain. It does so perish day by day, and 

 we do remain. The new materials take the place of old ones, 

 but those materials which help to compose us at any moment 

 seem to constitute a veritable and, for their time of office, an 

 essential portion of ourselves. 



Passing from conscious identity in the midst of change, let 

 us take a survey of the lowest class of change and identity 

 that we can conceive ; and we find it beautifully illustrated in 

 a dialogue in Oersted's Soul in Nature. The scene is a 

 waterfall, and the Swedish philosopher makes one of his 

 speakers exclaim, ' ' You here receive an impression of the fall 



