This is, indeed, a remark which is applicable to the supposed unknowableness of pure Being, or Absolute Being, when it is defined as the absence of all relations (as is done, for example, by Mr. Spencer to-day). Closely connected with the notion of substance are the categories of identity and diversity. These relations are of course to Locke thoroughly external. It is "relation of time and place which always determines identity." "That that had one beginning is the same thing; and that which had a different beginning in time and place from that, is not the same, but diverse." It is therefore easy to discover the principle of individuation. It "is existence itself, which determines a being of any sort to a particular time and place, incommunicable to two beings of the same kind." He applies this notion to organic being, including man, and to the personal identity of man. The identity of an organism, vegetable, brute, or human, is its continuous organization; "it is the participation of the same continued life, by constantly fleeting particles of matter in succession vitally united to the same organized body." _Personal_ identity is constituted by a similar continuity of consciousness. "It being the same consciousness that makes a man be himself to himself, personal identity depends on that only." It "consists not in the identity of substance, but in the identity of consciousness." It will be noticed that Locke uses the notion of identity which he has already established to explain organic and personal unity. It is the "_same_ continued life," "_identity_ of consciousness," that constitute them. We are, hence, introduced to no new principle. Identity is even in personality a matter of temporal and spatial relations. In the general account of the system of Leibniz it was pointed out that it is characteristic of his thought to regard identity and distinction as internal principles, and as necessarily implied in each other. We need not go over that ground again, but simply see how he states his position with reference to what is quoted from Locke. These are his words: "Besides the difference of place and time there is always necessary an _internal principle_ [or law] of distinction, so that while there may be several things of the same species, there are no two things exactly alike. Thus, although time and place (that is, relations to the external) aid us in distinguishing things, things do not cease to be distinguished in themselves. The essence of identity and diversity does not consist in time and place, although it is true that diversity of things is accompanied with that of time and place, since they carry along with them different impressions upon the thing;" that is, they expose the thing to different surroundings. But in reality "it is things which diversify times and places from one another, for in themselves these are perfectly similar, not being substances or complete realities."