IDEN'TITY, sameness, as distinguish ed from similitude and diversity ; the sameness of a substance under every pos sible variety of circumstances. Among philosophers, personal identity denotes the sentences of the conscious subject 1, throughout all the various states of which it is the subject.—System of identity, in philosophy, (otherwise called identism,) a name which has been given to the met aphysical theory of the German writer Schelling. It rests on the principle that the two elements of thought, the objects respectively of understanding and rea son, called by the various terms of mat ter and spirit, bbjective and subjective, real and ideal, Sm., are only relatively opposed to one another, as different forms of the one absolute or infinite : hence sometimes called the two poles of the absolute.—In a secondary sense the term identity denotes a merely relative same ness, which may he also called logical, or abstract. Thus, in logic, whatever
things are subjects of the same attribute, or collection of attributes, are considered the same ; for example, dog and lion aro the some relatively to the common no tion quadruped, under which they are both contained. Again, in physics, a tree may be assumed to be the sums in rela tion to all the rights of property, not withstanding the physical change which it. undergoes from the constant, segrega tion of old, and aggregation of new par ticles. Lastly, it is only in this logical use of the term, that we can be said in memory to be conscious of the identity of the reproduced, and the original idea, for if they were absolutely identical, it would be impossible to distinguish be tween the first appearance, and the re currence of an idea.