ABSTRACT
It is in the spirit of his earlier distinction between the natural and the moral man that Locke initiated the discussion of personal identity in the chapter 'Of Identity and Diversity'. A man, he argued, is as such like any other animal, a 'living organized Body' the principle of unity and continuity of which is its life. In common speech, 'man' simply means an animal of a certain form. It is easily shown, Locke thought, that the traditional definition, rational animal, falls short: an irrational animal in the 'shape and make' of a man would ordinarily be called a man, while we would count an animal which had the shape of a parrot, but which could 'discourse, reason and philosophize', as 'a very intelligent rational Parrot'P: A view to which Locke took specific objection was the doctrine (capable of either an Aristotelian or a Cartesian interpretation) that 'the Identity of Soul alone makes the same Man'.67 He argued against it that we can at least make sense of the Platonic hypothesis of transmigration, according to which the same immaterial soul is successively united to the bodies of different men, or even to the bodies of men and lower animals."
