Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/71

 whole being, that is, the continued resemblance of my thoughts to my previous thoughts, of my sensations to my previous sensations, and so on, this does not by any means define or circumscribe the individual, for we may say in the same manner that the species also is going on at the same time, and continues the same that it was. It is necessary to determine what constitutes the same individual at some given moment of time, before we can say that he continues the same. Neither does the relation of cause and effect determine the point: the father of the child is not the child, nor the child the father. In this case there is an obvious reason to the contrary; but we make the same distinction where a proper succession takes place, and the cause is entirely lost in the effect. We should hardly extend the idea of identity to the child before it has life, nor is the fly the same with the caterpillar. Here again we recur to likeness as essential to identity.

But to proceed to a more particular account of the origin of our idea of self, which is this relation of a thinking being to itself. This can only be known in the first instance by a consciousness of what passes in our own minds. I should say then that personality does not arise either from the being this, or that: from the identity of the thinking being with itself at different times, or at the same time: or still less from being unlike others, which is not at all necessary to it; but from the peculiar connection which subsists between the different faculties and perceptions of the same conscious being, constituted as man is, so that, as the 'subject of his own reflection or consciousness, the same things impressed on any of his faculties produce quite a different effect upon him from what they would do if they were impressed in the same way on any other being. Personality seems to be nothing more than conscious individu-