In those apprehensions, however, which we attach to the phrase, PERSONAL IDENTITY, we have reference to both the one and the other, the mind and the body; and combine together the two ideas, which are conveyed in both the phrases before raentioned, viz. mental identity and bodily identity.

A belief in personal identity, or conviction that there has been a continuance of our being, is to be regarded, and with abundant reason, as a primary truth.

The mere fact, that it is implied in our reasonings from the past to the future, and universally in our daily actions, is of itself a sufficient ground for considering it as such, for reckoning it among the original and essential elements of the understanding.

The farmer, who now beholds his well cultivated fields, knows, that he is identically the same person, who twenty years before, entered the forest with an axe on his shoulder, and felled the first tree. The soldier, who recounts by his fireside to his children and grand children the battles of his youth, never once doubts, that he was himself the witness of those sanguinary scenes, which he delights to relate. It is alike useless to attempt to deny or to prove to them what they know, what they believe, not on evidence, but from nature; what they take for granted in their hopes, in their retrospections, in their conversation, in all their engagements.

Another view of the subject may perhaps make the ground, which has been taken, more clear and impressive.

No train of reasoning, (what may be termed an argument,) can be brought to bear against this sentiment, that a belief in our personal identity is to be regarded as a primary truth, an original principle of our constitution.

The truth of this remark will appear on examination. There evidently can be no argument, properly so called, unless there be a succession of distinct propositions. From such a succession of propositions, no conclusion can be drawn by any one, unless he be willing to trust to the evidence of memory. But memory involves a notion of the

time past, and whoever admits, that he has the power of memory, in however small a degree, virtually admits, that he has existed identically the same at some former period, as at present.

The considerations, which we have in view and which are greatly worthy of attention in connection with the principle under examination, may with a little variation of terms be stated thus.

Remembrance, without the admission of our personal identity, is clearly an impossibility. But there can be no process of reasoning without memory. This is evident, because arguments are made up of propositions, which are successive to each other not only in order, but in point of time. It follows, then, that there can be no argument whatever, or on any subject, without the admission of our identity, as a point, from which to start. What then will it avail to attempt to reason either for or against the views, which are here maintained, since in every argument which is employed, there is necessarily an admission of the very thing, which is the subject of inquiry?

A third of those TRUTHS or fundamental propositions, which we term primary, may thus be stated;

§. 17. The external, material world has an existence.

The Pyrrhonick sect, so named from Pyrrho, its founder, a native of Elea, who flourished in the fourth century before Christ, called in question the truth of every system of opinions, adopted by other sects. Hence they have been also called scepticks and the sceptical sect; names, which, in consequence of holding every thing to be uncertain, they seem to have well merited. They denied among other things the existence of matter. Their reasonings in respect to the material world were such as the following.

FIRST; The organs of perception, said they, are different in different animals, and it is probable, that the same objects present different images or appearances to them. But one person evidently can have no reason for saying, that his perceptions are more agreeable to the real nature

of things than those of another person or of other animals. SECONDLY; Different objects present a different aspect according to their position, their nearness, or distance, or the mode, in which they are exhibited to the senses; and no good reason can be given, why one of these aspects should agree with the real object any better than the rest of them.

For instance we see a high steeple behind a very large wall or a hill and it appears to be very near and of diminished size, but we afterwards see it with a number of houses and spaces both open and enclosed between; and the steeple, when seen under this difference of circumstances appears differently, seeming to be of a larger size and at a greater distance.

But who can tell, which is the true, the correct representation of the object?

The moon appears to be only a foot or two feet in diameter, when beheld by the naked eye, but the telescope gives a very different account of its dimensions.

In this way, say those, who profess to be genuine scepticks, we are constantly imposed upon, our senses always giving us false representations. We, consequently, know nothing concerning the true nature of material objects. What is termed matter is entirely incomprehensible, and it is altogether an useless undertaking, to attempt to prove the existence of any external substances.

It was said of Pyrrho, that he carried, his principles so far as to be in danger of being run over by carriages or of tumbling from precipices. But as his doctrine always found enough disposed to ridicule it, these statements were probably the fabrication of his enemies.

Some have asserted, that the professions of the scep ticks are a mere pretence; that they do not believe or rather disbelieve what they profess to; but concerning this it is not essential to inquire, since we have their own explicit account of their opinions, whether it be an account corresponding with the truth or not.

But this is enough to have said concerning the scepticks

as a sect.

We should reckon ourselves to be but in a poor calling, if we were to stop, when so many important inquiries demand our attention, and argue at any length the point of the existence of a material world with any, who, may be disposed to deny it.

Let them remember, we do not attempt to explain what the real nature of matter is; but only assert, that it exists; no otherwise than when we acknowledge our ignorance of the nature of the existence of God, while we believe, there is such a being.

If the advocates of the doubting philosophy are unable by the sense of sight to judge correctly of the size of a steeple, has not the Almighty furnished them with another sense, that of the touch, by which they can form a more correct estimation?

If the eye of the body by itself alone be unable to give us a correct idea of the sun and moon, cannot the eye of the mind come in to its assistance? Can it not tell us not only the size of those bodies but mark out the path of their motion, and thus not only seeing those things, which actually exist, but those, which are to be hereafter, predict their position and appearance before that position and those appearances happen?

This also is to be considered.

These persons either deny or admit their own existence. If they deny it, then we have none to contend with. If they admit it, then it remains to be shown by them, how the declaration of Scripture, that all flesh is grass, does not hold true in respect to themselves, or that their bodies more truly exist now, than they will, when they shall have mingled with the dust, or have passed into other material shapes.

Furthermore, whatever may be the idea of scepticks on this point, the great mass of mankind believe in the existence of the Deity; a being of perfect truth as well as benevolence. But to create man so that he should be irresistibly led to believe in the existence of a material world, when it did not exist, to create him with high capacities of thought, of feeling, and of action; and then to

surround him with a panorama of illusive and imaginary appearances, would seem to be beneath both truth and goodness.

Admitting, therefore, the existence of the material world without further remarks on the subject, we come to a FOURTH PRIMARY TRUTH, which will be found to enter very extensively into all our investigations concerning the mind.

f. 18. Confidence is to be reposed in the memory.

When we say, that confidence is to be reposed in the memory, it is not meant to be asserted, that we are liable to no mistakes from that source. It is merely meant, that when we are satisfied, that our memory fully and correctly retains any perceptions of whatever kind of a former period, we receive such remembrances with as much confidence and act upon them as readily, as if the original perceptions were now present to the mind. Without this confidence in the memory we could hardly sustain an existence; we certainly could not derive any thing in aid of that existence from the experience of the past.

Our past life has been a series of sensations or of differ ent states of the mind, following each other in rapid and almost unbroken succession.

But if we are asked in what way we are able to connect the past states of the mind with the present, and to make our former sensations a part of the sum of our knowledge now; all the answer, which can be given to these inquiries, is, that, in the original designation of those principles, which were selected for the composition of our intellectual being, we are so constituted as to place a perfect reliance on the reports of that mental operation, which we term the memory; and this statement is equally satisfactory and the only satisfactory account, whether we consider the memory a simple or a complex exercise of the mind. There is one more of those principles, which are justly considered primary and original, to be mentioned. It is this.