We mean
indistinguishability. We mean that we cannot distinguish between the two
colours, the two notes, the two sensations. And this no doubt is a
relative knowledge, not a knowledge of things in themselves. But we do
not mean incapacity of being distinguished when we speak of our own
personal identity. When a man thinks to-day of his life of yesterday,
and regards himself as the same being through, all the time, he does
not simply mean that he cannot distinguish between the being that
existed yesterday according to his memory and the being that exists
to-day according to his present consciousness: he means that the being
is one and the same absolutely and in itself.
And this conviction of personal identity will presently be found to fall
in with the revelation of the Moral Law, which is my subject in this
Lecture. For it is by virtue of this personal identity that I become
responsible for my actions. I am not merely the same thinking subject, I
am the same moral agent all through my life. If I changed as fast as the
phenomena of my being changed, my responsibility for any evil deed would
cease the moment the deed was done. No punishment would be just, because
it would not be just to punish one being for the faults of a totally
different being.
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