Hume was dismissive of Shaftesbury’s claims in The Moralists about the identity, writing ”If the reader is desirous to see how a great genius may be influenc’d by these seemingly trivial principles of the imagination ... let him read my Lord Shaftesbury’s reasonings concerning the uniting principle of the universe, and the identity of plants and animals [in] his Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody: (Hume 1739–40: 1.4.6.6). It seems, however, that Hume did learn something about personal identity