dentity of connected objects are merely
verbal, except so far as the relation of parts gives rise to some
fiction or imaginary principle of union, as we have already
observed.

"What I have said concerning the first origin and uncertainty of
our notion of identity, as applied to the human mind may be
extended, with little or no variation, to that of _simplicity_. An
object, whose different co-existent parts are bound together by a
close relation, operates upon the imagination after much the same
manner as one perfectly simple and undivisible, and requires not a
much greater stretch of thought in order to its conception. From
this similarity of operation we attribute a simplicity to it, and
feign a principle of union as the support of this simplicity, and
the centre of all the different parts and qualities of the
object."--(I. pp. 331-3.)

The final result of Hume's reasoning comes to this: As we use the name
of body for the sum of the phenomena which make up our corporeal
existence, so we employ the name of soul for the sum of the phenomena
which constitute our mental existence; and we have no more reason, in
the latter case, than in the former, to suppose that there is anything
beyond the phenomena which answers to the name. In the case of the soul,
as in that of the body, the idea of substance is a mere fiction of the
imagination. This conclusion is nothing but a rigorous application of
Berkeley's reasoning concerning matter to mind, and it is fully adopted
by Kant.[35]

Having arrived at the conclusion that the conception of a soul, as a
substantive thing, is a mere figment of the imagination; and that,
whether it exists or not, we can by no possibility know anything about
it, the inquiry as to the durability of the soul may seem superfluous.

Nevertheless, there is still a sense in which, even under these
conditions, such an inquiry is justifiable. Leaving aside the problem of
the substance of the soul, and taking the word "soul" simply as a name
for the series of mental phenomena which make up an individual mind; it
remains open to us to ask, whether that series commenced with, or
before, the series of phenomena which constitute the corresponding
individual body; and whether it terminates with the end of the corporeal
series, or goes on after the existence of the body has ended. And, in
both cases, there arises the further question, whether t