Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/186

 104 LOCKE. operation of some other thing, it derives from this the idea of the causal relation, which is the most comprehensive of all relations, since all that is actual or possible can be brought under it. Cause is that which makes another thing to begin to be ; effect, that which had its beginning from some other thing. The production of a new quality is termed alteration ; of artificial things, making ; of a liv- ing being, generation ; of a new particle of matter, creation. Next in importance is the relation of identity and diversity. Since it is impossible for a thing to be in two dilferent places at the same time and for two things to be at the same time in the same place, everything that at a given instant is in a given place is identical with itself, and, on the other hand, distinct from everything else (no matter how great the resemblance between them) that at the same moment exists in another place. Space and time therefore form the principium individuationis. By what marks, how- ever, may we recognize the identity of an individual at dififerent times and in different places? The identity of inorganic matter depends on the continuity of the mass of atoms which compose it ; that of living beings upon the permanent organization of their parts (different bodies are united into one animal by a common life) ; personal iden- tity consists in the unity of self-consciousness, not in the continuity of bodily existence (which is at once excluded by the change of matter). The identity of the person or the ego must be carefully distinguished from that of substance and of man. It would not be impossible for the person to remain the same in a change of substances, in so far as the different beings (for instance, the souls of Epicurus and Gassendi) participated in the same self- consciousness; and, conversely, for a spirit to appear in two persons by losing the consciousness of its previous existence. Consciousness is the sole condition of the self, or personal identity. — The determinations of space and time arc for the most part relations. Our answers to the questions "When?" "How long?" " How large?" denote the distance of one point of time from another (e. g., the birth of Christ), the relation of one duration to another (of a revolution of the sun), the relation of one extension to