Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/76

 selves, retaining the same properties, and having the same immediate connection with the conscious principle. On the other hand, if I wish to anticipate my own future feelings, whatever these may be, I must do so by means of the same faculty by which I conceive of those of others, whether past or future. I have no distinct or separate faculty on which the events and feelings of my future being are impressed beforehand, and which shews, as in an enchanted mirror, to me and me alone, the reversed picture of my future life. It is absurd to suppose that the feelings which I am to have hereafter, should excite certain correspondent impressions, or presentiments of themselves, before they exist, or act mechanically upon my mind by a secret sympathy. I can only abstract myself from my present, and take an interest in my future being, in the same sense and manner in which I can go out of myself entirely and enter into the minds and feelings of others. In short there neither is nor can be any principle belonging to the individual which antecedently gives him the same sort of connection with his future being that he has with his past, or that reflects the impressions of his future feelings backwards with the same kind of consciousness that his past feelings are transmitted forwards through the channels of memory. The size of the river as well as it's taste depends on the water that has already fallen into it. It cannot roll back it's course, nor can the stream next the source be affected by the water that falls into it afterwards. Yet we call both the same river. Such is the nature of personal identity. If this account be true (and for my own part