There is to be found in it, every circumstance which can be required to substantiate it as a law of intuitive belief. It is universal, irresistible, immediate. Indeed, so truly prior and paramount is it to mere reasoning, that the very notion of reasoning necessarily involves the belief of our identity as admitted. To reason, is to draw a conclusion from some former proposition; and how can one truth be inferred from another truth, unless the mind, which admits the one, be the mind, which admitted the other? In its order, as much as in its importance, it may be truly considered as the _first_ of those truths which do not depend on reasoning, and as itself necessarily implied, perhaps in all, certainly in the greater number, of our other intuitions. I believe, for example, without being able to infer it, or even to discover the greater probability of it, by any process of reasoning, that the course of nature in future will resemble the past; and, since all mankind have the same irresistible tendency, I have no scruple in referring it to an original principle of our nature. In taking for granted this similarity, however, in the order of succession of two distinct sets of phenomena, I must previously have believed, that _I_, the same sentient being, who expect a certain order in the future phenomena of nature, have already observed a certain order in the past. Since, then, the belief of our identity is intuitive and irresistible, the only inquiry which remains is as to the circumstances in which the belief arises. Identity is a _relative_ term. It implies of course, in every instance, a double observation of some sort. The identity of our mind is its continuance, as the subject of various feelings, or at least as that which is susceptible of various feelings. The belief of it therefore, can arise only on the consideration of its successive phenomena; and is indeed involved in the mere consideration of these as successive.