480 REMARKS ON MR. LOCKE'S ESSAY. And are they not two persons according; to his nation ? His 20th and 2 tst sections seem to speak the saine thing. The chief answer that he gives hereto, is his distinction betwixt man and person, he may allow that Socrates is the same man still, i. e. the same spirit united to the same animal body ; but lie sloth not allowhim to be the same person, because not con- scious by remembrance of his own past thoughts or actions. And an I may be the same man that performed ahundred former actions of life, though I have entirely forgotten them all ; but I am not the saine person that performed millions of those actions, sinceI have .entirely forgotten.a far larger number of my thoughts than I can recollect. Now, I would only enquire whether such adis- tinction between man and person, is either correspondent with the nature and reason of things, or with the common language of all men, or the accurate expressions of true philosophy? In short, according to this doctrine of personal identity, many men may successively or simultaneously be one person ; and thus every private soldier in the army of Lewis the XIVth may become the same person as Alexander the Great, if a gene- ral frewsy should seize them, and make a strong impression upon -their minds, that they fought the battle at Issus, and beat Darius there. And so any one man may become many persons : for if Mr. N. Lee the tragedian in Bedlam Lath a strong impression on his fancy, that he taught Plato philosophy, then he is the same person with Socrates; or that lie pleaded in the Roman Senate ;against Mark Antony, then he is Cicero ; or that he subdued Gaul, and made himself master of Rome, then he is Julius Cmsar; That he wrote the iEneid, then he is Virgil ; that he began the reformation from popery, then he,is Martin Luther ; and that he reigned in England at the latter end of the sixteenth century, and then is the same person with Queen Elizabeth. On the other hand, this doctrine seems to allow us to believe, . that if St. Paul should irretrievably forget all the labours and sufferings that he underwent for the sake of the gospel,.ite would mot be the same person that fulfilled his apostleship so .glo- riously : and if Judas .should never think again through all his futureexistence, that he betrayed the Saviour of the world, he would not be the, same person that committed that heinous .wick. edness. The way Mr. 'Locke comes offfromany terrible consequen- ces of these possibilities in his 26th section, is by applying the word persan to man only in a forensic sense, as-he is the subject of happiness or misery, and is an object of rewards or punish- ments : and in section 13, he supposes the goodness and justice of :God will not suffer such extravagant possibilities to come to pass,- which may :affect the rewards or punishments of men ; but
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