SOURCE: "Hazlitt on the Future of the Self," in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 56, No. 3, July, 1995, pp. 463-81.

In the following essay, Martin and Barresi examine Hazlitt's theories of personal identity, focusing particularly on how they relate to modern philosophies.

There are moments in the life of a solitary thinker which are to him what the evening of some great victory is to the conqueror and hero … milder triumphs long remembered with truer and deeper delight. And though the shouts of multitudes do not hail his success … [yet] as time passes … [such moments] still awaken the consciousness of a spirit patient, indefatigable in the search of truth and a hope of surviving in the thoughts and minds of other men.¹

William Hazlitt's moment occurred in 1794, when he was sixteen years old. In that moment Hazlitt thought he realized three things: that we are naturally connected to...