when we say in certain computations that such or such shall stand for unity: we believe that nothing so rigidly receives or conveys the idea of unity as human being. The personal pronouns of every language demonstrate that there is a something which I cannot communicate to Thee, which Thou canst not exchange with Me, which We cannot part with to Him, nor He to either of Us. The son of Philip might most safely exclaim, Were I not Alexander, I would be Diogenes. Each man is a unit, an integer,-indivisible and incommunicable. And let these units be however conformable, contiguous, and multiplied, like a thousand or ten thousand parallel lines drawn with the least possible variety and least possible interval, they can never sink into one another. The possessive pronouns connect what is proper with each,-and the meum and tuum are not only good law, but sound philosophy. Even the suum is not far behind.

Individuality is not our exclusive attribute: there is no atom but to which it must ultimately and hypothetically attach. Compounds suppose simples. The infinite divisibility of matter, though axiomatic, is inconceivable. But we contend that no unity is strictly analogous to the propriety of the mind. Infinitesimal fractions are but words. These disintegrations are mere signs or sounds. Chemical experiments may be pushed until there is only a nominal and an inappreciable residuum. Mathematical figures, or rather ideas, may be equally refined away, solids may be converted into surfaces, surfaces into lines, lines into points, and points, some will say, have position without magnitude, and others, that they are nothing. There is more than this supposititious original in man. And in speaking of the ultimate referee in any act or thing, we say some one; or of the possible agent we speak,-one does or says so, one is apt to this, or liable to that. To call ourselves Oliç, no one, or nobody, is a most excellent stratagem when we wish to escape from an infuriated Cyclops; it is quite Ulysscan; but it is scarcely a worthy experiment to be practised in familiar society, or every-day life. There is an "on dit" for every tale.

Having explained that real unity, which any notion of ONE'S-SELF necessitates, it is proper to examine the signification

of person in this enquiry. It is, in common language, used of the human appearance and figure. We speak of a good person, of improvement in person, of personal requisites or disadvantages. Yet this is but metonymy,―the body, the volumen of the self, being substituted for the self. That appearance and figure do not receive personal ascriptions properly is evident, from their universal refusal to animals. We could not call an animal a person. "Now that," says Paley, "which can contrive, which can design, must be a person. These capacities constitute personality; for they imply consciousness and thought. They require that which can perceive an end, or purpose, as well as the power of providing means, and of directing them to their end. They require a centre in which perceptions unite, and from which volitions flow, which is mind. The acts of a mind prove the existence of a mind; and in whatever a mind resides, is a person." The word persona seems to have a dramatic allusion. It was the subject of debate between Salmasius and Milton. Though not strictly rendered by our term, person,-it might admit such a translation. Johnson cites Juvenal for this purpose. The merit of the controversy, perhaps, is this: Persona, in our sense, is admissible, but not elegant, Latin. With its original acceptation it is still used, when we speak of "Dramatis Personæ."

Whatever are the essentials of humanity, therefore, constitute the person. The part of a person cannot be conceived. Personality cannot be predicated of any nature inferior to our own. We must not suppose that our body occasions our personal diversities. There is as great a variety of feature, and distinction of form, indeed, as of the real persons :

"The Almighty has throughout

Discriminated each from each, by strokes

And touches of his hand, with so much art
Diversified, that two were never found
Twins at all points."

These varieties, however, are mere accidents, and the difference of person (we do not say of character,) would subsist though

Cowper.

the human form were cast in one mould. I cannot explain how personage became to notify illustrious, in contradistinction to inferior, individuals; but I am perfectly edified when I remember that no man can be called a parson without a full recognition of his personality, and of his personality as elevated above ordinary persons! He is, ex officio-a person!

Personal unity

Identity requires but little simplifying. demands the identity of its essence, and identity is but another mode of putting the case. This enters into whatever notion we can entertain of To εν. The Latin word, Idem, seems formed of the roots: Is, Demum: He only. And when we speak of man as identical, we mean not with his species, but with himself. His is the evolution of one continuous being. If the derivation be from the Greek,-1010s, proper or own, and s one, the amount of the term will be the same. But this is more fanciful than just.

Our corporeal identity we abandon as untenable. We must abandon it with the greater reluctance, since we are, in this instance, compelled to differ from the profound Hudibras:

"The beard's the identique beard you knew,

The same numerically true;

Nor is it worn by friend or elf,
But its proprietor himself."

Like other material substances, our bodies are built of parts. Leibnitz's theory, that each monad through all its changes is but fulfilling its own laws and powers, cannot, even if intelligible, disprove the fact of a change. Many would exhibit in disproof, the fixedness of features, the scars of wounds; but though there be a constant change of parts, nature, in her renovations, bears respect to all the peculiarities of individual structure, and even of structural injury. Others would plead that bodies were the same, from their growth, maturity, and decay; but this only attests the greater strength or weakness of the corporeal functions. A third party would reason from the slowness of the change; but if there be a change, it is as real at the end of ten years as of ten seconds. A fourth class will assert that there must be some rallying principle, some

F F

seminal core, some unchanging nucleus, which, notwithstanding these varied transformations, will justify the idea of corporeal unity and identity.

But is it conceivable that there is some part of our bodies independent of the laws which affect all other parts of our bodies? Can we suppose the atom, or, if you please, the corpuscle, which is outlawed from the great vascular and nervous systems? If organised, it must have its own system,—if not, it must be inert and dead flesh,-and then, by what conservative principle is it held back from corruption? Comparative anatomy has shown that the bony structure of our frame is subject to the same law of mutation with the more subtile and attenuated parts. The Epicurean dance of atoms is performed, with the greatest precision of movement and rapidity of figure, in this "too solid flesh." All who have made physiology their study, and all thinking persons who have not, will at once perceive that their bodies cannot retain a particle which they formerly possessed. As well might a man, who has obtained a new nose from Taliacotius or Carpue, swear that he was born with it, and that his nurse pinched it. And I may here observe, though I by no means am now going into the controversy, that if there be any truth in personal unity and identity, it is at eternal war with materialism and with homogeneousness.

"Man is a self-survivor every year."

Mental is, therefore, the proper exclusive identity for which I contend,―satisfied that corporeal individuality is absolute absurdity. Grave men have indeed avowed, and attempted to vindicate, it. Who can forget the Communications of the Society of Free-thinkers to that great philosopher Martinus Scriblerus? "The parts (say they who oppose us) of an animal are perpetually changed, and the fluids, which seem to be the subject of consciousness, are in a perpetual circulation; so that the same individual particles do not remain in the brain; from whence it will follow, that the idea of individual consciousness must be constantly translated from one particle of matter to another,

Young.

whereby the particle A, for example, must not only be conscious, but conscious that it is the same being with the particle B that went before."-"We answer, this is only a fallacy of the imagination, and is to be understood in no other sense than the maxim of the English law, that the king never dies. This power of thinking, self-moving, and governing the whole machine, is communicated from every particle to its immediate successor who, as soon as he is gone, immediately takes upon him the government, and still preserves the unity of the whole system.............Sir John Cutler had a pair of black worsted stockings, which his maid darned so often with silk, that they became at last a pair of silk stockings. Now, supposing those stockings of Sir John's endued with some degree of consciousness at every particular darning, they would have been sensible, that they were the same individual pair of stockings both before and after the darning; and this sensation would have continued in them through all the succession of darnings; and yet, after the last of all, there was not perhaps one thread left of the first pair of stockings, but they were grown to be silk stockings, as was said before."*

If aught may be added to so profound an illustration, the classical scholar may recall the ship of Theseus, which was so continually repaired in his honour, that at last it contained not a piece of its original timber.

For identity, therefore, of mind alone, we contend, for personal and intellectual identity; as we should say of Proteus in the grasp of Hercules, that the shapes are endlessly diversified, but it is Proteus still.

I might be contented to put identity on a parallel with the vital principle. The secret of both mocks detection. Identity is not more incomprehensible than being. But this belongs to the mere animal, and I see no reason to doubt that the animal is, in some measure, aware of its identity. "The ox knoweth its owner, and the ass its master's crib." At least, so far as animals approach us in reason, they may share our self-identifying convictions. Simple animal being most probably possesses

Pope's Works, Vol. iii.