An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2Locke, John
Philosophy
An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2
Locke, John
Knowledge, Theory of -- Early works to 1800
Thirdly, The same will hold of every PARTICLE OF MATTER, to which no
addition or subtraction of matter being made, it is the same. For,
though these three sorts of substances, as we term them, do not exclude
one another out of the same place, yet we cannot conceive but that they
must necessarily each of them exclude any of the same kind out of the
same place: or else the notions and names of identity and diversity
would be in vain, and there could be no such distinctions of
substances, or anything else one from another. For example: could two
bodies be in the same place at the same time; then those two parcels of
matter must be one and the same, take them great or little; nay, all
bodies must be one and the same. For, by the same reason that two
particles of matter may be in one place, all bodies may be in one
place: which, when it can be supposed, takes away the distinction of
identity and diversity of one and more, and renders it ridiculous. But
it being a contradiction that two or more should be one, identity and
diversity are relations and ways of comparing well founded, and of use
to the understanding.
3. Identity of modes and relations.
All other things being but modes or relations ultimately terminated in
substances, the identity and diversity of each particular existence of
them too will be by the same way determined: only as to things whose
existence is in succession, such as are the actions of finite beings,
v. g. MOTION and THOUGHT, both which consist in a continued train of
succession, concerning THEIR diversity there can be no question:
because each perishing the moment it begins, they cannot exist in
different times, or in different places, as permanent beings can at
different times exist in distant places; and therefore no motion or
thought, considered as at different times, can be the same, each part
thereof having a different beginning of existence.
4. Principium Individuationis.
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