SOURCE: "Personal Identity before the Essay, in Locke, Vol. II: Ontology, Routledge, 1991, pp. 254-59.

In the following essay, Ayers discusses Locke's response to questions surrounding the nature of the human mind, soul, and identity in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

In the first of those few entries in his journals clearly on the subject-matter of the chapter 'Of Identity and Diversity' (although the word 'identity' does not occur) Locke launched an attack on the doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul. The note begins with a statement of the 'usual physicall proofe' of natural immortality: since matter cannot think, the soul is immaterial; since an immaterial thing is by nature indestructible (because indivisible), the soul is naturally immortal. Materialists, Locke continued, complain that animals have sensation, 'i.e., thinke', so that the same argument would prove that animals too have immortal souls. To this objection immaterialists have...