For should the soul of a prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the prince's past life, enter and inform the body of a cobbler, as soon as deserted by his own soul, every one sees he would be the same person with the prince, accountable only for the prince's actions: but who would say it was the same man?
With this thought experiment, Locke suggests that "persons" are independent of "bodies" and what makes a person a person, and the same person, is consciousness - awareness of one's thoughts and actions: "Nothing but consciousness can unite remote existences into the same person" (464). Referring to a man he'd met who believed his soul had been the soul of Socrates, Locke asks, "If the man truly were Socrates in a previous life, why doesn't he remember any of Socrates' thoughts or actions?" Locke even says that if your little finger is cut off and consciousness should happen to go along with the finger, leaving the rest of the body, then that little finger would be the person - the same person that was, just before, identified with the whole body (459-460).
Sources:
John Locke. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Book 2, Chapter 27, Section 15. 1690. As collated and annotated by Alexander Campbell Fraser. New York: Dover, 1959. Volume 1. 457.
Peg Tittle. What If...Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophy. Part 3, Personal Identity. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2005. 70-71.
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