11th of March 1719, and the 3rd
of August 1733? Or will he affirm, because he has entirely forgot the
incidents of these days, that the present self is not the same person
with the self of that time; and by that means overturn all the most
established notions of personal identity? In this view, therefore,
memory does not so much produce as discover personal identity, by
shewing us the relation of cause and effect among our different
perceptions. It will be incumbent on those, who affirm that memory
produces entirely our personal identity, to give a reason why we cm thus
extend our identity beyond our memory.

The whole of this doctrine leads us to a conclusion, which is of great
importance in the present affair, viz. that all the nice and subtile
questions concerning personal identity can never possibly be decided,
and are to be regarded rather as gramatical than as philosophical
difficulties. Identity depends on the relations of ideas; and these
relations produce identity, by means of that easy transition they
occasion. But as the relations, and the easiness of the transition may
diminish by insensible degrees, we have no just standard, by which we
can decide any dispute concerning the time, when they acquire or lose a
title to the name of identity. All the disputes concerning the identity
of connected objects are merely verbal, except so fax as the relation of
parts gives rise to some fiction or imaginary principle of union, as we
have already observed.

What I have said concerning the first origin and uncertainty of our
notion of identity, as applied to the human mind, may be extended with
little or no variation to that of simplicity. An object, whose different
co-existent parts are bound together by a close relation, operates upon
the imagination after much the same manner as one perfectly simple and
indivisible and requires not a much greater stretch of thought in order
to its conception. From this similarity of operation we attribute a
simplicity to it, and feign a principle of union as the support of this
simplicity, and the center of all the different parts and qualities of
the object.

Thus we have finished our examination of the several systems of
philosophy, both of the intellectual and natural world; and in our
miscellaneous way of reasoning have been led into several topics;
which will either illustrate and confirm some preceding part of this
discourse, or prepare the way for our following opinions. It