MEMORY AND THE INDIVIDUAL.
[To THIC EDITOR Or TSR " SPECTATOR:1 Six,—With regard to the question of "Memory and the Individual," we shall surely agree with Leibniz when be says: " A quoy Tons serviroit-il de devenir Roy de In Chine it condition d'onblier ee que vous ayes este? Ne seroit-ce pas la meme chose que si Dien en meme temps qu'il vous detruisoit, creoit un Roy dans in Chine ? " For assume that after death a man has no memory of the past. Now it may or may not be the case that an external spectator with adequate know- ledge may perceive only one unbroken and continuous life or experience, may trace this or that connexion between the dead man's life on this earth and his life in another world, and maY see how one modifies and influences the other. But that is nothing at all to the dead man, for ex hypothesi he remembers not the past. Therefore his life or experience in another world would in no way differ for him from that of the hypothetical ling of China, which is assumed to be identical in content. It is essential to distinguish the external or objective and the internal or subjective points of view. It may or may not be the case that my present experience is continuous with some past experience, which I do not now remember, for some omniscient spectator; but if I do not remember, that old experience is nothing for me, and, for me at least, its owner would in no wise differ from another individual. Surely identity and individuality mean either memory and (perhaps) anticipation, or the being an unbroken and continuous experi- ence for some one else. I may add that the Leibnizian dictum is as old as the ninth book of the " Nicomachean Ethics" of Aristotle.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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