The knowledge of our _mind_ as a _substance_, and the belief of our _identity_ during successive feelings, may be considered as the same notion, expressed in different words. Our identity is the unity and sameness of that which thinks and feels,--itself substantially unchanged amid the endless variety of its thoughts and feelings,--capable of existing separately in all these different states; not ceasing therefore when they cease, but independent of their transient changes. The knowledge of _mind_, then, as a substance, implying the belief of identity during changes of state cannot be involved in any one of these separate states; and, if our feelings merely succeeded each other, in the same manner as the moving bodies of a long procession are reflected from a mirror, without any vestige of them as _past_, or consequently, any remembrance of their successions, we should be as incapable of forming a notion of the sentient substance _mind_, abstracted from the momentary sensation, as the mirror itself; though we should indeed differ from the mirror, in having what mind only can have, the sensations themselves, thus rapidly existing and perishing. But, if it be only on the consideration of some _past_ feeling, that the belief of the permanent substance mind can arise, it is to the principle which recals to us past feelings, that the belief is ultimately to be traced. We _remember_;--and in that remembrance is involved the belief, the source of which we seek. It is not merely a past feeling that arises to us, in what is commonly termed memory, but a feeling that is recognized by us as _ours_, in that past time of which we think,--a feeling, therefore, of that mind which now remembers what it before saw, perhaps, or heard, or enjoyed, or suffered. We are told by writers on this subject, that it is from a _comparison_ of our present with our past consciousness, that the belief of our identity in these states arises; and this use of the term comparison, which is commonly applied to a process of a different kind, may perhaps mislead you as to this simpler process. It is true, indeed, that the belief arises from a feeling of the past, that is remembered, together with the consciousness of our remembrance as a present feeling,--a contemplation, as it were, of two successive states of the mind. But the comparison is nothing more than this.--It is not to be supposed that we discover in the two feelings some common quality or proportion, as when, in arithmetic or geometry we compare two numbers, or two regular figures; for the two feelings may have nothing common, except that very belief of identity which is involved in the remembrance itself. We remember the past,--we feel the present,--we believe, and cannot but believe, that the rememberer of the past existed in that past which he remembers. The _process_ itself is sufficiently simple, however truly wonderful one of the feelings may be which forms the