> Carrol, does the "#5" mean that this is their fifth example in time
> sequence of this use of "identity" in English?
RAWLEY is short for (from Bib. of OED in Vol. XX)
Rawley, William ed. *Bacon's (F) History naturall and experimental of life and death* 1638 (1650).
I used # because I don't know where on the keyboard to find the upright squiggly which I presume stands for "Section" or something like that. (I own the American Heritage Dictionary and the OED, but have misplaced Webster's Collegiate with its table of non-alphanumeric signs).
The 2a. stands roughly for order of appearance in English. If I remember correctly the rule of thumb for interpreting the OED on matters of first appearance is that, while as close to Platonic perfection as any human artifect (with the possible
exception of the chapstick), the OED probably misses the first usage of a term
by a third to a half of a century. (Most terms, of course, probably have at least several decades of use before appearing in print. But then Bacon may have felt
as free to invent Latin words as did Shakespeare English words.)
Nevertheless, I think it would be fair (until someone offers evidence to the contrary, to accept your "too excellent" hypothesis. Even if Bacon's own usage was a Latin neologism, his translator only a few decades later chose the English word to use as we see it in the quote from Rawley. It would be fascinating to speculate on the significance of Bacon being one of the very earliest users of a concept so intrinsic to bourgeois individualism.
There is a marvellous scene in *The Duchess of Malfi* (1623) which also catches up (though it does not use the term) this modern sense. The murderers are attempting to convince the Duchess that she should accept her death peacefully as it were as an escape from this sordid world. Her reply:
I am the Duchess of Malfi still.
I don't currently have an annotated edition of the play, and from the 12+ columns of the OED on "still" I can't (at least in 30 minutes) find a sense that quite pleases me, but the Coverdale Bible trans. (1535) gives us "One generation passeth away, another cometh, but the earth abideth still" (translated "for ever" in 1611). The OED for this sense (3a of *still* as adv) is "With reference to action or condition: Without change, interruption, or cessation; continually, constantly; on every occasion, invariably, always. *Obs.* exc. *poet*."
I.e., "I," says the Duchess, am *always, invariably, absolutely*, the Duchess, and I would not be the Duchess, would violate my [identity?], were I to consent to my own death, however helpless I am to prevent it. You can kill me, but you cannot make me repudiate my core self??????????
Carrol
> Or is Bacon's *Historia
> vitae et mortis* really the origin. But then did he use a latin neologism?
> It would be too excellent if the project of doing a Baconian natural
> history of "identity" in this sense (which is more or less the one which
> had been under discussion) would begin with Bacon.