In the second chapter, we saw how the scriptures of a religion were supposed to determine its unchanging nature. In the third, it was the nation, bound together through time by language and custom. In the fourth, it was a racial quiddity shared by all blacks or all whites. In the last chapter, we saw how unhelpful it is to look for the essence of a class. In each case, people have supposed that an identity that survives through time and across space must be underwritten by some larger, shared commonality; an essence that all the instances share. But that is simply a mistake.
