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Rebirth-A Philosophical Study
and it has no nature except to express itself in its attributes if the chartcter of the new self, under certain circumstances were exactly similar to my character under the same circumstances, its attributes would be exactly similar to my attributes Then the substance also would be the same, and I should not be aonibilated at all But if there were a new sell, then the new self would not be of cxactly similar character to what I should have been under the same circumstances, and therefore the creation of a new self would not be exactly equivalent to my rebirth Thus exact similarity of attributes is always sufficient to prove personal identity, not because it would be sufficient if the substance were different but because it proves that the substance is the same 25
5 Another objection bas been raised by some Even if supposing that in spite of the loss of merdory, the same person continues in the succesive life what is the value of such immortality and survival for such a person
But McTaggart maintains that loss of meniory need not render immorta lity valueless if it would not have been valueless without the loss of memory If this life has value without inchiory beyond itself, why should not future lives have value without memory beyond themselves ? And desire for immortality has importance because future will be, we believe and hope, a great improvement for the present,
6 It is also objected that if the chief ground for belief in the successive lives after death is for the progressive improvement of the person, then loss of memory would destroy all the achievement of the previous life,
It is doubtless that boundless items of our experience lapse from conscious memory and survive only as dispositions and tendencies But although much may persist in the unconscious some continuity of consciousness and memory 18 involved in the ordinary personality Pringlo-Pattson points out that McTaggart's position is paradoxical and musicading when he asserts that in spite of loss of memory it is the same person who lives in the successive lives' He quotes from Leibniz and states that it is not useful to have immortality without mcmory "Graoting that the soul is e substance and that no substance perishes, the soul then will not be lost, as, indeed, nothing 18 lost in nature But this immortality without recollection 18 ethically quite useless What good, sir, would it do you to become King of China, as a condition that you forget what you have been ? Would at not be the same as if God, at the moment he destroyed you, were to creato a king in China ?" Only an illusion of imagination permits us to speak
25 McTaggart Some Dogmas of Religion, p 129
