On the Nature of the Self
There are some philosophers who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our self. They believe we feel its existence and its continuance in existence with the utmost certainty. But for my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other: of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and can never observe any thing but the perception.
Some philosophers seem inclined to think that personal identity is a very clear notion, and that a dispute concerning it would be frivolous. Yet if we examine their hypothesis closely, we shall find that, far from resolving the difficulty, they involve themselves in it more than those who candidly avow their ignorance. Every object naturally preserves its identity with itself through any change of place or time, provided it be the same object, indivisible and not composed of parts. But when we attribute identity to the human mind, we can only mean to assert a relation among objects that are mutually connected by the tie of resemblance, contiguity, or causation.
The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance, pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different times, however much we may be naturally inclined to imagine that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us: it is nothing but a bundle of different perceptions which constitute the mind.
From what impression could this idea of self be derived? This question is impossible to answer without a manifest contradiction and absurdity. It must be some one impression that gives rise to every real idea. But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are supposed to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same through the whole course of our lives, since self is supposed to exist in that manner.
Personal identity, for philosophers, consists in one of two things: in consciousness or in substance. Those who place it in consciousness may mean consciousness of the present moment only, or consciousness of past actions and sentiments. The question resolves itself into this: what constitutes the identity we ascribe to the mind of man?
We have a distinct idea of an object that remains invariable and uninterrupted through a supposed variation of time, and this idea we call that of identity or sameness. We have also a distinct idea of several different objects existing in succession and connected together by a close relation. So long as we do not reflect on this succession, the train of related objects is felt by the mind as if it were one continuous object. This inclination to confound identity with the relation of resemblance is the origin of the fiction of a persistent self.
From what impression could this idea of self be derived? This question is impossible to answer without a manifest contradiction and absurdity. It must be some one impression that gives rise to every real idea. But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are supposed to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same through the whole course of our lives, since self is supposed to exist in that manner.
Memory alone is what introduces the relations of resemblance among our perceptions and is therefore to be considered, in this respect, as the source of personal identity. Had we no memory, we should never have any notion of causation, nor consequently of that chain of causes and effects which constitute our self or person. But having once acquired this notion from memory, we can extend the same chain of causes beyond our memory and comprehend times and actions we have entirely forgotten but suppose in general to have existed.
So far as I can see, the chief difficulty in this question of personal identity concerns whether the parts of the mind are necessarily connected or only accidentally related. Philosophers begin to be reconciled to the principle that we have no idea of external substance distinct from the ideas of particular qualities. This must pave the way for a like principle with regard to the mind: that we have no notion of it distinct from the particular perceptions. When we talk of self or substance, we must have an idea annexed to these terms, otherwise they are altogether unintelligible.