Criticism of Locke
That Personality is not a permanent, but a transient thing: That it lives and dies, begins and ends, continually: That no one can any more remain one and the same person two Moments together, than two successive Moments can be one and the same Moment: that our Substance is indeed continually changing; but whether this be so or not, is, it seems, nothing to the purpose; since it is not Substance, but Consciousness alone, which constitutes Personality; which Consciousness, being successive, cannot be the same in any two Moments, nor consequently the personality constituted by it." And from hence it must follow, that it is a Fallacy upon Ourselves, to charge our present Selves with any thing we did, or to imagine our present Selves interested in any thing which befell us, yesterday, or that our present Self will be interested in what will befall us to morrow; since our present Self is not, in Reality, the same with the Self of Yesterday, but another like Self or Person coming in its Room, and mistaken for it; to which another Self will succeed to morrow.
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Famous quotes containing the words criticism of, criticism and/or locke:
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
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—John Locke (1632–1704)