Why Each Moment is a New Reality: Identity

The separation of existences is justified by 4 things:

An explanation of the principle of identity
Why the resemblance of our broken and interrupted perceptions causes us to unify them as a single identity
Proof of the propensity to unite these broken appearances by a continued existence.
An explanation for that force of conception arising from the propensity.

Justification 1: The view of any one object is not enough to convey the idea of identity.

In such a case:

the object is the same with itself if the word ‘object’ had the same meaning as the word ‘itself’, and
the proposition would only have a subject, and not a subject and a predicate.

One single object conveys the idea of unity, not that of identity.

On the other hand, a multiplicity of objects can never convey this idea, no matter how resembling they are.

The mind always:

pronounces the one not to be the other, and
considers them as forming two, three, or any number of objects, whose existences are distinct and independent.

Since both number and unity are incompatible with the idea of identity, the the idea of identity must lie in something that is neither of them.

But honestly, at first sight this seems impossible.

There can be no medium between unity and number just as there is nothing between existence and nonexistence.

If one object exists, we can suppose that another also exists.

In this case, we have the idea of number.

If one object exists, we can suppose that another object does not exist.

In this case, the first object remains at unity.

To remove this difficulty, let us include the idea of time or duration.

Time implies succession (Part 2, Section 5).

When we apply time to any unchangeable object, only the mind can change the unchangeable object in its imagination.

This imagination almost universally takes place.

Through it, a single object that we stare at for continuously is able to give us a notion of identity.

The concept of time allows us to consider the object in two ways:

We can consider it in Time 1 only.

This gives us the idea of number.

We can consider it in Time 1 and Time 2.

This gives us the idea of unity.

The idea of identity is the medium between unity and number.

Identity is the view of either unity or number depending on us.

We say that an object is the same with itself when we mean that the object in Time 1 is the same object in Time 2.

Through this, we make a difference between the idea meant by ‘object’ and the idea meant by ‘itself’, without:

Thus the principle of individuation is nothing but the invariableness and uninterruptedness of any object through time.

The time factor allows the mind to trace it in the different periods of its existence, without: