‘If identity (to instance in that alone) be a native impression, and consequently so clear and obvious to us that we must needs know it even from our cradles; I would gladly be resolved by one of seven or seventy years old, Whether a man, being a creature consisting of soul and body, be the same man when his body is changed? Whether Euphorbus and Pythagoras, having had the same soul, were the same man, though they lived several ages asunder? Nay, whether the cock too, which had the same soul, were not the same with both of them? Whereby perhaps it will appear that our idea of sameness is not so settled and clear as to deserve to be thought innate in us. For if those innate ideas are not so clear and distinct as to be universally known and naturally agreed on, they cannot be subjects of universal and undoubted truths, but will be the unavoidable occasion of perpetual uncertainty. For I suppose every one’s idea of identity will not be the same that Pythagoras and thousand others of his followers have: and which then shall be true, which innate? Or are these two different ideas of identity both innate?’—Page 60. Two things are obvious to remark on this passage. First, it seems clear that the child, before it can pronounce that one thing is or is not the same as another, must have the idea of what _same_ is, _i.e._ of identity: or it would be impossible for it to know what is or is not the same. This idea, then, is necessarily included in or the result of the first comparison it is able to make between any two of its impressions as alike or unlike. Secondly, the difficulty of determining the question proposed by Mr. Locke does not arise from the meaning of the word _identity_, but of the word _man_. For if this is once clear and settled, there will be no great effort of the understanding required to determine whether a man is the same or not. They define him to be a creature consisting of body and soul, and it is plain that if one of these, the body, is altered, the man is not the same. The whole question, therefore, here seems to turn on deciding what qualities are essential to the idea of man, so that by keeping or leaving out some, he will or will not retain his identity, in the practical and moral sense of the term. It is the complex and general idea of man that the child wants, not that of identity or sameness which is reflected to it from every object it meets, and which it perceives to agree or disagree with some other.