65. In the very sentence, however, where Locke restricts the testimony of sensation to existence present along with it, he uses language inconsistent with this restriction. The particular existence which he instances as ‘testified to’ is that of ‘such a collection of simple ideas as is wont to be called man.’ But these ideas can only be present in succession. (See Book II. chap. vii. sec. 9, and chap. xiv. sec. 3.) Even the surface of the man’s body can only be taken in by successive acts of vision; and, more obviously, the states of consciousness in which his qualities of motion and action are presented occupy separate times. If then sensation only testifies to an existence present along with it, how can it testify to the co-existence (say) of an erect attitude, of which I have a present sight, with the risibility which I saw a minute ago? How can the ‘collection of ideas wont to be called man,’ _as co-existing_, be formed at all? and, if it cannot, how can the present existence of an object so-called be testified to by sense any more than the past? The same doctrine, which is fatal to the supposition of ‘a necessary connexion between the man’s existence a minute since and his existence now,’ is in fact fatal to the supposition of his existence as a complex of qualities at all. It does not merely mean that, for anything we know, the man may have died. Of course he may, and yet there may be continuity of existence according to natural laws, though not one for which we have the testimony of present sense, between the living body and the dead. What Locke had in his mind was the notion that, as existence is testified to only by present sensation, and each sensation is merely individual and momentary, there could be no testimony to the continued existence of anything. He could not, however, do such violence to the actual fabric of knowledge as would have been implied in the logical development of this doctrine, and thus he allowed himself to speak of sense as testifying to the co-existence of sensible qualities in a thing, though the individual sensation could only testify to the presence of one at a time, and could never testify to their _nexus_ in a common cause at all. This testimony to co-existence in a present thing once admitted, he naturally allowed himself in the further assumption that the testimony, on its recurrence, is a testimony to the same co-existence and the same thing. The existence of the same man (he evidently supposes), to which sensation testified an hour ago, may be testified to by a like sensation now. This means that resemblance of sensation becomes identity of a thing--that like sensations occurring at different times are interpreted as representing the same thing, which continuously exists, though not testified to by sense, between the times. But it is not maintained: the testimony is to operation of permanent identical things.