Indeed it may conceive the substance whereof it is now made up to have existed formerly, united in the same conscious being:  but, consciousness removed, that substance is no more itself, or makes no more a part of it, than any other substance; as is evident in the instance we have already given of a limb cut off, of whose heat, or cold, or other affections, having no longer any consciousness, it is no more of a man’s self than any other matter of the universe.  In like manner it will be in reference to any immaterial substance, which is void of that consciousness whereby I am myself to myself:  so that I cannot upon recollection join with that present consciousness whereby I am now myself, it is, in that part of its existence, no more myself than any other immaterial being.  For, whatsoever any substance has thought or done, which I cannot recollect, and by my consciousness make my own thought and action, it will no more belong to me, whether a part of me thought or did it, than if it had been thought or done by any other immaterial being anywhere existing.

27.  Consciousness unites substances, material or spiritual, with the same personality.

I agree, the more probable opinion is, that this consciousness is annexed to, and the affection of, one individual immaterial substance.

But let men, according to their diverse hypotheses, resolve of that as they please.  This every intelligent being, sensible of happiness or misery, must grant—­that there is something that is himself, that he is concerned for, and would have happy; that this self has existed in a continued duration more than one instant, and therefore it is possible may exist, as it has done, months and years to come, without any certain bounds to be set to its duration; and may be the same self, by the same consciousness continued on for the future.  And thus, by this consciousness he finds himself to be the same self which did such and such an action some years since, by which he comes to be happy or miserable now.  In all which account of self, the same numerical substance is not considered a making the same self; but the same continued consciousness, in which several substances may have been united, and again separated from it, which, whilst they continued in a vital union with that wherein this consciousness then resided, made a part of that same self.  Thus any part of our bodies, vitally united to that which is conscious in us, makes a part of ourselves:  but upon separation from the vital union by which that consciousness is communicated, that which a moment since was part of ourselves, is now no more so than a part of another man’s self is a part of me:  and it is not impossible but in a little time may become a real part of another person.  And so we have the same numerical substance become a part of two different persons; and the same person preserved under the change of various substances.  Could we suppose any spirit wholly stripped of all