moment of the injury. Now if the self remembers because and according as it is now, might not another self be made of a quality the same, and hence possessing the same past in present recollection? And if one could be made thus, why not also two or three? These might be made distinct at the present time, through their differing quality, and again through outward relations, and yet be like enough for each to remember the same past, and so, of course, to be the same. Nor do I see how this supposition is to be rejected as theoretically impossible. And it may help us to perceive, what was evident before, that a self is not thought to be the same because of bare memory, but only so when that memory is considered not to be deceptive. But this admits that identity must depend in the end upon past existence, and not solely upon mere present thinking. And continuity in some degree, and in some unintelligible sense, is by the popular view required for personal identity. He who is risen from the dead may really be the same, though we can say nothing intelligible of his ambiguous eclipse or his phase of half-existence. But a man wholly like the first, but created fresh after the same lapse of time, we might feel was too much to be one, if not quite enough to make two. Thus it is evident that, for personal identity, some continuity is requisite, but how much no one seems to know. In fact, if we are not satisfied with vague phrases and meaningless generalities, we soon discover that the best way is not to ask questions. But if we persist, we are likely to be left with this result. Personal identity is mainly a matter of degree. The question has a meaning, if confined to certain aspects of the self, though even here it can be made definite in each case only by the arbitrary selection of points of view. And in each case there will be a limit fixed in the end by no clear principle. But in what the general sameness of one self consists is a problem insoluble
