my will has power (and as, by means of my power of locomotion, I can move my whole body), that sensitive controllable body, with the mind that is affected through its organs of sense, and that controls it, forms myself. I see other objects touching other animate or inanimate beings, but I receive no sensation, these are not myself. I see danger approaching another person which he should avoid, but I cannot, by the act of my will, move his limbs as I could my own, to carry him out of the way of it. That person is not myself.

With respect to prolonged identity, or the knowledge that I am now the same person that I was in all former parts of my history, that depends partly on the consciousness that my body is the same, the same medium of sensation, the same organs of sense, the same limbs which I have commanded and used for my purposes all my life. Whether it be the same matter or not does not enter into the question. It is its being the same organisation, although, according to that organisation, it may have been continually changing the matter of which it is composed. An oak does not consist of the same matter as it did when, as an acorn, it was planted in the earth. Yet, to one who had observed it from the moment that it began to appear above the ground till it became a great tree, it would be the same, because its organisation had never been changed. So a human body is the same, from its embryo in the womb, through all the stages of its growth-infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, old age; because it has been throughout its history the same organisation. It is the same to-day that it was yesterday, the same yesterday that it was the day before; and so, tracing it backwards to its origin, no day could be found on which it could be said, this is not the same body that it was yesterday. The germ therefore of the organisation of the body may be so minute as to be indestructible, and its organisation may, after death, still exist, and be perfectly known to Him who made it.

But my sense of personal identity depends chiefly on my remembrances. I am the same person who have been affected so and so, or who have done so and so, which effects and acts are recorded in my memory. If my sensations or perceptions, after affecting me for the moment, should pass away, and could never be recalled, as if they had been objects passing before a mirror, leaving no trace of themselves, I could have no consciousness of prolonged personal identity. But myself is my mind, with its store of remembrances accumulated during my whole life; or, rather, my mind, with its aptitude for having its series of past sensations and perceptions, emotions and acts of its will, and its past ruminations of them, recalled to me.

My prolonged identity, in the view of other persons, depends on the identity of my body from the time that they became acquainted with me, connected with what they have known of my history. They judge my body to be the same by its organisation being the same, as I should judge of an oak being the same from its first appearance above ground, till its becoming a lofty tree; and that judgment they connect with what they remember of my history, my sayings and doings, and sufferings. Thus my own personal identification from my childhood till now depends on my own remembrance of my history; and commences with the commencement of those remembrances. My personal identification, in the estimate of others, depends on what they remember respecting me; and commences also with the first of those remembrances; to which is added, day by day, or year by year, their further acquaintance with my history recorded in their own memories.

CHAPTER III.

THE WILL.

By the will, we understand the power of the mind to choose or refuse. An act of the will is an act of choice. This is the definition adopted by Edwards, and we would only add this explanation, that it is a power of immediate effective choice; and not a mere preference, or desire, or wish, which we have not power to gratify.

The very first effect of the change which we have made in the hypothetic circumstances of the mind, by furnishing it with a human body, and that amount of power over its motions which the mind of man possesses, is the exercise of a WILL. In its former state, it had no power, and therefore no will; for we have seen that, although there may be desire where there is no power, there cannot be will. Now, by our former hypothesis, the mind had no power over the body, and having no power over the body, it had no power over its own operations. It could not procure the repetition or prolongation of a sensation, nor could it command the remembrance of a former sensation. These remembrances or revivals of sensations in the mind itself we saw were regulated by certain laws called the laws of suggestion, over which the mind had no direct power. We saw that a necessity was imposed upon it of attending only to one sensation or reminiscence at a time, and that the preference given to any sensation or reminiscence was determined not by any act of the mind, but by some quality or relation in the sensation or reminiscence. We saw that when the attention was directed to any sensation, or remembrance of a sensation, by a desire existing in the mind itself to examine it, that desire was excited by some quality in the sensation or reminiscence, or by its relation to other

sensations or reminiscences. We saw, also, that the pleasure or the pain of sensations was equally beyond the power of the will; that it could not love nor hate, according to the dictates of the will. But now that the mind has a body, over the movements of which it possesses a certain control, it has attained to the exercise of a will; because, when it chooses, it can move the hand, or the foot, the head, the eye, the lips, the tongue, in one direction or another. Here it has absolute control. The obedience to it by those muscles to which the power of the will extends, is prompt and perfect, to the full extent of their strength and liberty.

Here is the dominion of the mind, and its only direct dominion. It can move its own limbs, its arms, its legs (that is, its own by possession and command), the trunk of its body, its head, its eyes, its tongue, and the muscles of its face, all within certain limits. It can also, by moving the members of its body, move other bodies. It can grasp, and push, and draw, lift up, and let down other objects within certain prescribed limits; but it cannot will the movement of these other objects, as it can the movement of the muscles of its own body. It cannot even directly will or command the removal of its own body from one place to another. All that it can do for that purpose is to will the movement of certain muscles by which it creeps, or walks, or runs from one place to another. When, therefore, the word will is applied to the force exerted on extraneous bodies, it is only in a figurative or secondary sense. It cannot move them by a mere act of will. The will reaches no farther than the movement of certain muscles, which muscles move those parts of the body to which they are attached; and those parts of the body, when thus put in motion, move extraneous objects with which they come in contact, with a force, regulated by the mechanical laws of motion -that is a force proportioned to their momentum.

Nor does the will acquire any direct power over the

mind itself, by having a body placed, to a certain extent, under its control. The mind still can attend but to one object at a time, at least in the sense in which we have already explained; and the attention, we have seen, is drawn to any object, not by a direct fiat of the mind, but by some quality in the object, or some circumstance connected with it.

But the power over the body with which the mind is endowed may be made to afford to it great aid in directing the attention to one object in preference to others. If it be a visible object that it desires to attend to, it can direct the eyes towards it. If it be a reminiscence, it can shut the eyes against external objects that might draw off its attention; it can read about an object to which it desires to attend, or converse about it, or remove the body to situations where it meets various objects which have been formerly associated with it. By such means it can procure much aid, from its control over the body, in keeping any object before it which it desires to examine or reflect upon. But still the act of the will is merely the producing those actions of the muscles by which these intermediate operations are effected.

If the most despotic monarch were deprived of all power of voluntary movement, he would also be deprived of all exercise of the will. He might still fervently desire to have some object effected, but he could no longer, even in a figurative sense, will it. From his habit of commanding, he might for a time attempt to effect his purpose, but his power to express his will is gone; he can make no sign, and he would soon cease to repeat his impotent attempts to exercise a will.

In loose, incorrect language, we say, a man wills operations through the medium of others, very remote from any movement of his own muscles. But he is merely like one who has set up a number of blocks of wood in a row, so that if the first be overturned in a certain direction, it overturns that which is next to it,