202 



and the same being,, which I call myself. Here is an intuitive 

 judgment involving the simple idea of personal identity J' ^ 

 The question which first arises here is as to the simplicity of 

 the idea. Is it impossible to analyze the idea of personal 

 identity? Let us try both from the particulars of which it is 

 a generalization, and from it, as a generalized thought, to 

 these same particulars. Is the '^me" possible as an idea 

 without the not me ? Then, is either the one or the other 

 possible, apart from a vast number of perceptions that must 

 all be in the soul as thoughts before the thoughts of objects, 

 such as the me^' and those which are not me/^ can arise. 

 Again, is not the thought of myself^' resolvable into at 

 least the thought of a person, and those other thoughts which 

 fix that of a person to me, so that it makes me known to 

 myself as myself and not another ? 



Then as to the necessity of the idea of personal identity. 

 Certain memories and reasonings make it impossible for me to 

 discredit the fact that I got my dinner yesterday, so are 

 certain memories and reasonings necessary to my belief that I 

 am myself, and not another person. It seems, therefore, 

 absurd to call certain ideas innate,''^ or intuitive,^^ or 



necessary,''^ when all are equally so, if the proper occasions 

 are presented. The plain state of the case is merely this — a 

 truth cannot be both known and unknown in the same mind 

 and at the same time. Take the ideas of my personal identity 

 and that of my having had my dinner yesterday. What does 

 it really amount to that these ideas will inevitably and infallibly 

 spring up in my mind whenever the required conditions are 

 present ? Simply this — that when these truths are known, 

 they cannot be unknown. Mr. Stewart quotes Locke as 

 affirming exactly what he himself means, when the former 

 says, — " He that hath the idea of an intelligent but frail and 

 weak being, made by and depending on another, who is 

 omnipotent, perfectly wise and good, will as certainly know 

 that man is to honour, fear, and obey God, as that the sun 

 shines when he sees it.^^ f What is this but that he knows 

 the sun shines when he knows that it does, and so he knows 

 that God is to be worshipped and obeyed when he knows that 

 too ? Locke confirms this when he says, — But yet these 

 truths being never so certain, he may be ignorant of either or 

 all of them who will never take the pains to employ his 

 faculties as he should do to inform himself about them.'''' 

 That is, if he is ignorant he is ignorant, and if he knows he 



* Philosophical Essays, by Dugald Stewart, ed. 1816, p. 98. 

 t Loclce's Essay, book iv. chap. xiii. § 3. 



