SECTION 1. There are few words the ambiguity of which has led to

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ON SAMENESS AND IDENTITY.

* * * * * *

PHILOSOPHICAL SERIES.

NUMBERS IN PREPARATION.

NO. II. STUDIES FROM THE LABORATORY OF EXPERIMENTAL

PSYCHOLOGY.

Researches are in progress on: Memory and the Least

Noticeable Difference in Sensation; Measurement in the

Diagnosis of Diseases of the Nervous System; The Rate at

which the Nervous Impulse Travels; The Personal Difference in

the Time of Mental Processes; The Rate, Extent, and Force of

Movement; Accuracy of Perception as a Function of the Time

of Stimulation; The Correlation of Mental Time, Intensity,

and Extensity; The Relative Value to Science of Experiment,

Observation, and Memory; The Building of Complex Perceptions;

etc.

NO. III. DESCARTES' "MEDITATIONS," with Latin and English

Texts, and Philosophical Analysis. By George Stuart Fullerton

and William Romaine Newbold.

* * * * * *

Publications of the University of Pennsylvania

PHILOSOPHICAL SERIES.

Edited by

George Stuart Fullerton

Professor of Philosophy

and

James McKeen Cattell

Professor of Psychology.

No. 1. April, 1890.

ON SAMENESS AND IDENTITY.

A Psychological Study: Being a Contribution to the Foundations

of a Theory of Knowledge.

by

GEORGE STUART FULLERTON.

Philadelphia

University of Pennsylvania Press

Publishers

On Sameness and Identity.

PART I.

THE KINDS OF SAMENESS.

And some require everything accurately stated; whereas, this

accuracy annoys others, either because of their inability

to follow a train of reasoning through, or because of its

hair-splitting character; for accuracy does involve some

hair-splitting.

Aristotle, Metaph. Book I, The Less, c. 3.

SECTION 1. There are few words the ambiguity of which has led to

more confusion and profitless dispute than that of the word _same_.

Men constantly use this word as though it had but one meaning, and

that meaning were always clear, whereas it really gives expression

to a number of widely different experiences, some of which are quite

difficult of analysis. It is highly desirable that these experiences

should not be confounded with each other, but kept clearly separate,

as the consequences of such misconception are very far-reaching. How

far-reaching, I shall in the pages to follow try to indicate.

It is my purpose to point out the differences in connotation of the

several senses of this highly ambiguous word, to show the element

which they have in common, and to trace some of the difficulties and

absurdities which have sprung from using the word loosely and without

proper discrimination. I shall have to plead guilty to something very

like hair-splitting, but I may put forward in excuse the undeniable

fact that "accuracy does involve some hair-splitting." If anyone

prefers the self-contradictions and preposterous conclusions to which

loose and unanalytic thought has so often led the unwary, he is welcome

to them. I shall hold a few of these up to inspection after a while.

For my part, I prefer a little quibbling at the outset of a discussion

to a systematic incoherence all through it, with the chances of finding

myself in a _cul-de-sac_ at the end. Whether I am successful in

dissipating to some degree the fog which has hung about samenesses and

obliterated important distinctions, each one must judge for himself.

The kinds of sameness I find to be as follows:

SEC. 2. I. We speak of any sensation, feeling, or idea, or complex of

sensations, feelings, or ideas, as being the same with itself at any

one instant. The pain in my finger is what it is at this moment. The

finger itself (the immediate object of knowledge, a complex from sense

and imagination) is, at each moment, what it is. It is to this sense

of the word that the logical laws of Identity and Contradiction have

ultimate reference.

SEC. 3. II. A sensation, feeling, or idea, or complex of sensations,

feelings, or ideas, considered in itself and without reference to

the world of material things, is called the same with one previously

existent when the two are alike. I say, for example, that I feel to-day

the same pain I felt yesterday, or that I have dreamt the same dream

three times. This is evidently not sameness of the kind first mentioned.

SEC. 4. III. We speak of seeing the same material thing at different

times. Suppose a man passing along a country road to look across a

field at a distant tree. What he actually sees is a small bluish patch

of color, which, interpreting in terms furnished by his previous

experience, he supplements with material drawn from memory and

imagination. On the following day he looks at the tree again from a

nearer point and sees a larger green patch of color with distinct

differences of shading and with a clear outline. This he interprets in

a similar manner.

Now, without being a philosopher at all, and without conscious

reference to anything beyond what he has experienced or can experience,

he affirms that he has on two successive days seen the same tree. I

ask, just what is the significance of the word same as used in this

connection? What peculiar experience has it been employed to mark? What

is perceived on the one occasion is not the same as what is perceived

on the other in the sense of the word first given (by "perceived"

I mean existing in consciousness as a complex of mental elements.

With the supposed external correlates of our percepts I am not now

concerned). And it is equally clear that two such percepts need not be

the same in the second sense of the word, for they may be quite unlike.

In this case they are unlike, so far at least as what is actually in

sensation is concerned.

What peculiar experience then does the word mark when the observer

declares that he has seen the same tree twice?

We are now in the sphere of material objects (_i. e._, as experienced;

I refer to the mental content and nothing more), and are not concerned

with our experiences as isolated elements, but as grouped and arranged

in series. Our total possible experience of any one object is a

collection of partly simultaneous and partly successive actual and

possible sensations which condition each other, and which we regard as

a unit. The Idealist believes that this is all there is of the object,

and all we mean when we commonly employ the word. The Realist assumes

that there is something beyond and corresponding to this experience,

and which is to be regarded as the real thing. He, however, must admit

that all we can know of any object, in whatever sense we choose to

employ that word, all our evidence for maintaining its existence and

determining its qualities, must be drawn from this group of sensations.

It is this that we immediately know, and anything inferred must be

inferred from this.

From this it follows that when any one, whether Realist, or Idealist,

or unreflective man, feels justified in asserting that what he

perceives to-day is the same object he perceived yesterday, he is

led to make this assertion on the strength of some distinction in his

immediate experience, and he refers only secondarily, if at all, to

anything beyond and external to this. The distinction which he marks

by the word is this: He has reason to believe that the two percepts

in question belong to the one series,--to the one life history,

so to speak. He believes that had he cared to do so he could have

filled up the gap between them by a continuous series of percepts,

each conditioned by the preceding, and forming the one chain. Each

represents to him the one object, in that each stands for the whole

series, and his thought is much more taken up with the series as

a whole than with the individuals composing it. He knows that the

percepts in such a series can only be successive, never simultaneous.

Had he reason to suspect that the two percepts we are discussing belong

to different series of this kind, and that there is nothing in the

nature of the case to prevent their being simultaneous, he would decide

for two trees.

But each percept contains more than one mental element, and just as we

may regard each percept as representing the whole series, so we may

regard each element as representing the whole complex which may be

experienced at one time, and through this the whole series of percepts.

I say that the orange I smell is the same with the one I see; that

I can reveal by striking a light the chair I fell over in the dark;

that I hear rattling down the street the coach I stepped out of a few

moments ago. It is not worth while to distinguish this use from the

use of the word same just mentioned, for they agree in making a single

experience stand for a whole group or series, which is assumed to

be at least potentially present with each one. When we have had two

experiences thus representing the one group, we say that we have in two

ways, or on two occasions, experienced the same object. In this sense

has the man in our illustration seen yesterday and to-day the same

tree. In this sense could he at the one time see and touch the same

tree.

It is in this sense also that we use the word when we say that the

object seen with the naked eye and the object seen through a telescope

or under a microscope are the same. If I look at a distant object

with the naked eye and then look at it through a telescope, what I

actually see (or what is actually in the sense) is in the two cases

very different. But just as seeing an object from a distance with the

naked eye, I may walk towards it and substitute for the dim and vague

percept which I first had a series of percepts increasing in clearness

and ending in one which I regard as altogether satisfactory, so I may

substitute at once this clear percept for the dim one, by the use of

the telescope, and may know that it properly belongs to the series

which, taken as a whole, constitutes my notion of the object. This

I may know from the relations which this percept bears to the other

percepts of the series, and which allow me to pass in my inferences

from it to them as I can from any one of them to another. If, seeing

a dim object upon the horizon, I raise a telescope and through it

perceive the figure of a man, I know that I could have had a similar

percept without any telescope by simply approaching the object.

Conversely, on perceiving a man near at hand, I know I could have a

similar percept from a distance by looking through a telescope. I call

the man seen through the telescope the same as the man seen with the

naked eye, for the same reason as I call the man seen by the eye at a

distance the same with the man seen near at hand.

And the apparently non-extended speck which I see with the naked eye

looks very different from the curious insect I see when I place a

microscope over this speck, but I call them the same for the reason

just given. If the insect as seen under the glass be divided, so is

the speck as seen by the eye; if the insect is taken away, the speck

disappears too. The series of percepts made possible through the

microscope may be regarded as a continuation of the series which arises

from approaching the eye to the object. Each member in it stands in a

relation to this primary series similar to that illustrated above in

the case of the telescope, and similar to that held by the terms of the

primary series to each other. It should be kept clearly in mind that

in all these cases the object (immediately perceived) is the same only

in the sense pointed out, _i. e._, two or more percepts, which may,

in themselves considered, be quite unlike each other, are recognized

as in a certain relation to each other, as each representing the one

series to which all belong. If one thinks he has reason to believe each

percept represents not merely the series of percepts, but something

different, which he infers and is pleased to call the "real" thing, he

may be inclined to believe that in saying he sees the same object on

two occasions he is referring to this something. It must be clear to

him, however that all his evidence for the sameness of this something

lies in the experience I have described, and it is to this that he

must point in proof that it is the same. The percepts themselves are

certainly not the same in any other sense than the one given. They are

not identical, and they need not be alike. They merely stand for each

other. Should one forget this, he will fall into blunders which I will

illustrate at length when I speak of the common opinion on the subject

of the infinite divisibility of space.

John Locke, in his famous "Essay,"[1] has made a distinction between

the sameness of masses of inorganic matter and the sameness of

organisms. That of the former, he says, consists in the sameness of

their particles, while the sameness of a plant or animal does not

consist in that of the particles which compose it at this time or at

that, for they are in continual flux, but in the participation in the

one life of the organism. It does not, however, appear to me that we

have here a real difference in the kind of experience marked by the

word. The difference is merely that in the one case we connect this

experience, not with the object as a whole, but with the separate

particles which compose it, which we take as so many separate objects

each having a sameness of the kind just discussed, while in the other

case we look upon the object as a whole, as a unit, and disregard any

reference to its component parts. But whether we regard the object as

a unit or take each of its ultimate parts as separate objects, we are

thinking of the one kind of sameness. We are thinking of a certain

life-history in which any one link may represent the whole, and any

two links may be, from this point of view, regarded as equivalent.

It is not merely with reference to plants and animals that we speak

of sameness without regard to a sameness of constituent parts. We

do it in this case simply because the organism furnishes us with a

convenient unit, and one much more important as a unit than as an

aggregate. We can make similar units when we please, and consider their

sameness without thinking of their parts. We speak of the same nation

as existing through many generations, and of the same corporation

as surviving many deaths. Whether the object we are considering be

naturally indivisible, or composite and assumed a unit for convenience,

when we speak of it as the same at two different times we are referring

to the one experience. Locke does make here a distinction worth

noticing, but it does not mark two fundamentally different uses of the

word.

[1] Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. 2, Chap. 27, § 3.

SEC. 5. IV. Two objects are called the same, and two other mental

experiences occurring at the one time are called the same, from the

fact that they are recognized as alike. The botanist, finding that

two plants belong to the one class calls them the same without

any intention of confounding the two individuals. Nor does one who

places his two hands in warm water and declares that he has the same

feeling in both, confound the two streams of sensation. The fact

that only likeness is meant is here clearly recognized. It is not, I

think, as clearly recognized when similar sensations or other mental

experiences (considered singly), occurring at _different_ times, are

called the same. In that case they are sometimes spoken of as if they

were material objects having a continuous sameness after the fashion

explained above.

SEC. 6. V. The word same is used to signify the relation between any

mental experience and that which is regarded as its representative.

This representative may or may not resemble it. We speak, for example,

of calling up in memory this or that object seen at some past time. The

memory-image is certainly not the same with the original percept in

Sense I. When we say that the object of memory is the past, we cannot

mean this, for it is plainly false. Nor is it thought of as merely like

it, as in Sense II. It is thought of as a something which represents

it--stands for it in a peculiar way. Just what this implies I will not

here attempt to discover. It is enough for my purpose to point out that

when we say a man remembers an object we do not mean merely to indicate

the presence in his imagination of a resembling picture, but to include

a certain relation between this picture and an original percept.

It is not easy to describe what is present in an act of memory. When I

am thinking of another man as calling to mind something from his past

experience, I bring before my own mind two pictures, one representing

his original percept, and one his present memory-image. Holding these

before me together, I recognize them as related, but distinct. I

use the word same to denote their relation. But the person who is

exercising his memory does not have before his mind two objects, an

original and a copy, with an observed relation between them. He has

not the original, or it would not be an act of memory. When, however,

he reflects upon his experience as I have done, he represents it to

himself as I have represented it to myself. He speaks as if, in the

act of remembering, he were conscious of two objects and could compare

them. He speaks of recognizing the memory picture as a copy and

representative of the original percept. Language, as commonly used,

adapts itself to this way of regarding the matter, and I may leave a

further analysis of it to the student of the memory, merely pointing

out that, whatever is implied in the experience, a common use of the

word same is to denote this relation between any mental experience and

the memory-image which represents it.

It will be seen that this kind of sameness may be presupposed in

affirming sameness in other senses of the word. When I compare a

present sensation with one felt some days since, and affirm that they

are the same, the latter must enter into the comparison through its

representative in memory. It is not itself present at the time of the

comparison.

And when I say that I have seen the same tree yesterday and to-day,

I mean, as I have explained, that the two percepts belong to the one

series; but since my experience of yesterday cannot be itself present

in my consciousness to-day, it can take its place in the series, as

thought to-day, only by proxy. When I say that I have in my mind the

same series on two successive days, I evidently mean that it is the

same series in the sense in which any experience and its representative

in memory are the same.

Other less important instances might be given of this use of the

word same to express the relation between any experience and its

representative. We say that we see an object in a mirror, when we mean

that we see its reflected image. We speak of seeing in a picture this

man or that. When we have found for anything a satisfactory substitute

we say it is the same thing. Such uses of the word are not likely to

deceive anyone, and I will not dwell upon them. Their meaning is too

plain to be mistaken.

SEC. 7. VI. We constantly speak of two men as seeing the same

thing. In this we have a sense of the word which demands careful

analysis. For the sake of clearness, and to avoid ambiguity, I will

confine myself here, as I have done in the foregoing sections, to an

examination of what is actually experienced by the men, and will defer

all consideration of existences assumed as lying beyond a possible

experience in an extra-mental world, for discussion in sections to

follow.

The question which interests me at present is simply this: What

experience is it that leads a man to affirm that he and someone else

are perceiving the same object? The Realist (in the modern sense) would

say that this experience is only his evidence that he and another are

perceiving the same object, meaning by object what I have referred to

as believed to lie beyond his experience; while the Idealist would

say that this experience exhausts the whole matter. The Realist must,

however, admit, as I have brought out in a different connection, that

all his evidence for the existence of the object (in his sense), and

for any affirmations whatever regarding it, lying within the field of

the immediately known, any words, which have been coined to express

qualities of, or distinctions concerning, this object, would retain a

use and significance as marking distinctions within this field even

if the object were supposed non-existent. Whether any such duplicate

of what is immediately perceived exists or not is a question apart.

Since we admittedly draw all our distinctions from the field of the

immediately known and then carry them over to such objects, and not

_vice versa_, we may be sure that we would go on saying that two men

see the same object in any case. I myself give the preference to

that the existence of which is an indubitable fact, and prefer using

the word _object_ to indicate the complex in consciousness. I have,

however, no desire to assume any point in dispute by juggling with a

word, and will try to keep clearly in mind the meaning of the word thus

assumed whenever I use it.

Now, the experience which leads me to say that I and another man see

the same object is just this: I perceive a particular object, and in a

certain relation to it I perceive the body of another man. From a past

experience of my own body in relation to objects and from reasoning

by analogy, I have come to connect such a relation of another body to

the object with the thought of another consciousness of the object as

connected with that body. Just as I perceive my own body to perform

certain actions when I am conscious of perceiving the object, so

I perceive this other body with which I have connected in thought

a consciousness of the object to perform similar acts in response

to similar relations towards the object. It is wholly a matter of

observation in my own case that the perception of my own body in this

or that relation to an object is a _sine qua non_ to the perception of

the object. And it is wholly a matter of reasoning from like to like

that leads me to connect in thought sensations or percepts with any

other animal body whatever. When I say, therefore, that I and another

man are perceiving the same thing, there is in my mind a complex

consisting of a percept or idea of the thing, a percept or idea of the

man's body, and the thought of a percept connected with this body. When

I say that he is thinking of us both as seeing the same thing, I call

up in mind a similar complex and connect it in thought with his body.

Whatever I may believe as to the existence or non-existence of things

lying beyond this sphere, and supposed to cause these experiences,

these are the experiences to which I ultimately refer when I speak of

two men as seeing the same object, and these furnish the whole ground

for the existence of the phrase.

The percept of the object which I connect in thought with the other

man's body need not be wholly similar to my percept of the object.

The man who has discovered that he is color-blind, does not suppose

that men not similarly afflicted see just what he does in looking

at a cherry tree full of ripe fruit. Nevertheless, he still speaks

of himself and others as seeing the same objects. If another man's

body is not exactly like mine, I am not justified by argument from

similarity in reading into it an exactly similar experience. It is not

the similarity of the two percepts that I am thinking of chiefly when

I speak of them as percepts of the same object. I am thinking of the

relation in which I suppose them to stand to each other. I think of the

possible existence of the one under given circumstances as conditioning

the possible existence of the other.

SEC. 8. VII. When a man in an early stage of reflection upon his

experience has decided that objects immediately perceived are not the

real things but merely their mental copies or representatives, he may

think of these "real" things in several ways. He may believe in a world

of "real" things, consisting of groups of "real" qualities, external

to consciousness; he may accept such "real" things, but add to them a

substratum or substance, distinct from the qualities; or he may believe

that the "real" exists as mere substratum, substance, or noumenon,

and that all qualities, being merely its revelation to mind, exist

within the circle of consciousness alone. The first position is one not

often taken. The second is that held by Locke,[2] who believed that,

corresponding to our ideas of objects, there exist substances possessed

of certain primary qualities, and having an underlying substance or

substratum. The third represents the view of the Kantian,[3] who, to be

consistent, must deny to his noumenon any qualities whatever. How he is

to do this without having it lapse into utter nothingness is a problem

for him to solve.

[2] Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Bk. 2, Chap. 2, § I, and

Bk. 2, Chap. 23, § 1. _et seq._

[3] Kritik der reinen Vernunft.--"Von dem Grunde der Unterscheidung

aller Gegenstände überhaupt in _Phænomena_ und _Noumena_." Kant's

Sämmtliche Werke, herausgegeben von Hartenstein. Leipzig, 1867, 3er

Band, s. 209, _et seq._ See also, Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft;

Vorrede; and the discussion: "Wie eine Erweiterung der reinen

Vernunft in praktischer Absicht, ohne damit ihr Erkenntniss als

speculativ, zugleich zu erweitern, zu denken möglich sei?" I Th. II

B. II Hptst.; same edition, 5er Bd., s. 5, 140. I am not concerned

here with the inner contradiction of the Kantian system. The notion

of noumena predominantly in Kant's mind, was, I think, about as

I have stated. He would not, of course, have denied "reality" to

phenomena, but his misconception of Berkeley, and the satisfaction

with which he settles down to the noumenal in the Critique of the

Practical Reason, show that he felt toward the "blos Erscheinung"

very much as Locke felt toward mere ideas. Cf. "Essay," Bk. 4, Chap.

11, § 7.

The disciple of Locke has, therefore, in discussing all the uses of the

word same, to consider the sameness of:

1. Things immediately known.

2. Groups of "real" qualities in an extra-mental world, more or less

like what is immediately known.

3. Substance; the "I know not what" to which Locke clung through all

difficulties.

The man who holds the first of the three views above mentioned need

only consider the first and the second of these; and the Kantian

need only consider the first and the third, rebaptizing the latter

"noumenon" or "thing-in-itself."

Omitting for later consideration the sameness of the self or ego, I

have already discussed the uses of the word same within the field of

the immediately known. It remains to consider the sameness of what is

believed to lie beyond this, and to belong to a different kind of a

world.

When men discuss these supposed realities, in what senses of the word

same may they reasonably think of them as the same?

When a common, unreflective man, whose mind has not been, in the words

of Bishop Berkeley, "debauched by learning," looks at a tree and thinks

about it, he believes he sees a real tree, at a certain real distance

from his body, and of a given real height and figure. It does not occur

to him to make any distinction between the tree immediately perceived,

and an inferred second tree, not immediately perceived, but represented

by the former. There is the tree; he sees it; he can touch it; it seems

to him but one: and he always talks as if there were but one tree to

be discussed in the premises. That one tree, he thinks, is really

extended; is really out in space beyond his body; is, in short, what it

appears to be. To his unreflective mind this tree does not seem to be a

representative or to be seen through a representative, but to be seen

immediately and just where it really is.

But when a man has begun to battle with the difficulties of reflection,

and has learned to make a distinction between things and his ideas

of the things, he will probably fall into unforeseen perplexities

about this tree. He reflects that, when he closes his eyes, the tree

disappears; that when he approaches it it looks green, and when he

recedes from it it grows blue; that a man with a peculiar defect in

his vision does not see it colored as he does; that when he makes a

pressure on the side of one eyeball he sees two trees where before he

saw only one; that when he makes such a pressure upon both eyeballs and

moves them about a little he sees two trees moving about, although he

knows real trees can not ordinarily be made to move about so easily.

Such reflections lead him to distinguish between the tree as he sees

it, and the tree as it really is, and he defines the tree as he sees it

as the tree immediately known, and the real tree as the tree mediately

known, a cause of the existence of the former. He now thinks that he

sees directly only copies or representatives of real things, and as he

believes these copies or representatives to be in his mind, and usually

talks as if his mind were in his head, or at least in his body, he

concludes that things immediately known must in many instances be much

smaller than they seem, or perhaps lack extension altogether. How can

a tree thirty feet high be in a man's mind? It is true, that, when I

press upon my eyeballs in the manner described, I seem to see two trees

of that size moving; but must it not be a mistake? Must we not assume

that what is immediately seen only _seems_ extended, and stands for an

extended thing which is grasped through it? So our philosopher learns

to distrust the immediate object of knowledge; to regard it as in some

sense unreal as compared with what it represents; and to deny to it

those properties which it apparently possesses. It is not extended, but

it stands for extension; it is not colored, but it stands for color; it

is not real, but it stands for reality.

It is natural, however, for one who has gone thus far to go farther.

When he reflects again upon the fact that he sees the tree of a

different color at different distances; when he remembers that colors

vary with the quality of the light by which they are seen; when he and

his neighbor dispute concerning the true color of the one tree which

he sees dotted with red leaves, and which his opponent claims to see

of a uniform color; then he may well begin to ask himself what is the

true color of the "real" tree, or whether it is certain that it has

any color at all? May not, then, the "real" tree have only some of the

qualities that we ordinarily attribute to trees? Perhaps, the space

qualities?

Or, worse yet, since some of the qualities that the ordinary man

attributes to trees may be regarded as existing only in a shadowy way

in our ideas, why may not the same be true of all the other qualities?

How do we know that "real" trees are extended? How do we know that

"real" extension must be assumed as the cause of the delusive apparent

extension of our ideas, if it is true that "real" color need not thus

be assumed as a cause of our sensations of color? What if the "real"

thing exists only as an indescribable and incomprehensible somewhat,

which we must assume as a cause of the immediately known, but of

which we can know nothing more? When one has once begun this slippery

descent, it is not easy to say where he may find a peg to stay him in

his course.

Suppose, however, he is content to strip the "real" thing of what are

commonly called the secondary qualities of matter, and to leave to it

what are known as the primary. He will follow the example of the wholly

unreflective man and speak of it in such a way as to suggest that the

thing itself is something apart from its "real" qualities. A tree, he

will say, _has_ qualities. It would certainly sound odd to hear him

say it _is_ qualities. And he will very possibly go on to justify the

use of the language he employs by distinguishing between the "real"

qualities represented by his mental picture of the tree and an obscure

something which he assumes as underlying them; thus embracing the

Lockian distinction of ideas, "real" qualities, and substance. He may

conclude, it is true, that substance in this sense of the word is

chimerical, and that the belief in it arises out of a misunderstanding

of the significance of language; but if he has gone so far as to

assume duplicates of things immediately known, in the form of "real"

qualities, it is more probable that he will be inclined to complete his

classes of beings by adding the third.[4]

[4] There is, of course, no reason why he may not add as many more

classes as he pleases, and justify the additions as he justifies

this. Men do not do this, as a matter of fact, but that is no reason.

Now, it does not concern me to consider whether this change of view

is to be regarded as a real progress in reflective knowledge or as a

progressive decline and fall of the unreflective man. The point which

concerns me is this: The unreflective man talks as if but one tree were

under discussion. The man who reflects uses the same forms of speech:

and even when he believes that he must distinguish between the tree

immediately known and the obscure something which he has come to look

upon as its cause, or between the tree immediately known, the bundle of

"real" qualities inferred, and the obscure something that he connects

with these, he still goes on talking as if he had only one thing to

talk about. The danger of such a proceeding is obvious. If I talk

about two or three things as though they were one, it is but natural

that I should sometimes confuse them with each other. Should proof be

forthcoming for one of these, it would be but natural for me to fall

occasionally into the error of supposing that it somehow applies to the

others. If I go on saying "the tree" when I mean one tree and something

else, two trees, or two trees and something else, it is only to be

expected that I sooner or later come to grief in my reasonings.

And it should be noted that this peculiar ambiguity in the names of

things entails a parallel ambiguity in the use of the words by which we

indicate the mind's recognition of the presence of things. We commonly

speak of a drunken man's _seeing_ two trees, where a sober man sees

one. We speak of an insane man as _hearing_ voices, when no one has

spoken. We say that we _see_ the maples are turning red, even when we

believe that color may not properly be attributed to the mediate object

of knowledge. On the other hand, those who hold to the existence of

"real" objects of the kind before mentioned, generally maintain that

in referring to things in space, their positions and mutual relations,

we are giving attention, not to the immediately known, but to its

"external" double. "I see, feel, perceive," it is "said, not the image,

and not the constituents of the image (the ideas), but the external

object by _means_ of the image."[5] If one holds that this "external"

object presupposes a substance, a something distinct from a group of

qualities, there is nothing to prevent his maintaining, should he

wish to do so, that in saying "I see a tree," primary reference is

had to this substance or "reality." Of course, if, in the sentence

"I see a tree," the word "tree" can have three meanings, it follows

that there is also a possibility of taking in three senses the word

"see." It is hardly necessary to point out that, unless one is very

careful, "seeing" in one sense may result in "believing" in another,

as "kicking" did in the famous case of Dr. Johnson and the stone. The

caution is pertinent with respect to any other word used in the same

general way as we use the word "see."

[5] Ueberweg. See Krauth's Ed. of Berkeley's "Principles," Phila.,

1874, p. 343.

I have said that when a man abandons his original unreflective

position and learns to distinguish between things immediately known

and other things they are supposed to represent, he goes on using the

common language, and talking as though there were but one thing under

consideration. Now, men do not do this merely in common conversation

and in writing about matters of everyday life, but they do it in the

very books that have been written to prove that each thing is thus

double or triple. John Locke, for example, begins the very chapter

in which he is about to draw the distinction between the secondary

and primary qualities of bodies (_i. e._, between the constituents

of things immediately known and the constituents of their "external"

correlates), as well as to enlighten us on our ideas of substances,

with the following words:[6]

[6] "Essay", Bk. 2, Chap. 23, § 1.

"The mind being, as I have declared, furnished with a great number

of the simple ideas, conveyed in by the senses, as they are found in

exterior things, or by reflexion on its own operations, takes notice

also, that a certain number of these simple ideas go constantly

together; which, being presumed to belong to one thing, and words

being suited to common apprehensions, and made use of for quick

despatch, are called, so united in one subject, by one name; which,

by inadvertency, we are apt afterward to talk of, and consider

as one simple idea, which indeed is a complication of many ideas

together: because, as I have said, not imagining how these simple

ideas can subsist by themselves, we accustom ourselves to suppose some

_substratum_ wherein they do subsist, and from which they do result,

and which therefore we call _substance_."

It is clear enough from this, as it is clear enough from other passages

in the same book, that Locke talked as though the complex of simple

ideas in consciousness were the very same thing (in Sense I) as the

group of "real" qualities outside of consciousness. And no careful

reader of his book can avoid seeing that the confusion of his language

is a fair index to the confusion of his thoughts with regard to the

two.[7] It is little better in the case of "bodies" and substance. In

the passage just given, he would seem to make _substance_ an obscure

something underlying groups of ideas, and not groups of real qualities,

but in the next sentence he makes it a substratum of the qualities

which produce in us ideas. In many passages[8] he distinguishes between

_substance_ and _substances_, by which latter he means groups of "real"

qualities with the added substratum or substance; as such substances he

instances oak, elephant, iron. He emphasizes the fact that substance

is not to be confounded with substances, which are things of different

sorts.[9] In so far as the substances are bundles of qualities, they

are known to us through sensation.[10] In so far as they are also

substance, they cannot be known to us through sensation, for the idea

of substance is not known through sensation.[11] We are not then to

look upon substance as such a constituent part of "a substance" as a

quality is. The two belong to different classes. And if we offer proof

for the existence of "real" substances, which is evidently applicable

to them only as bundles of qualities--proof from sensation--then

substance is overlooked altogether. It is significant that Locke,

having thus put together under one head as "a substance" an oak viewed

as a bundle of "real" qualities and an oak viewed as substratum,

proceeded to argue as if he had but one thing to prove when he felt

called upon to defend the real existence of substances. In his chapters

on "The Extent of Human Knowledge," the "Reality of Knowledge," and

"Our Knowledge of the Existence of Other Things,"[12] he devotes

himself wholly to proving things as bundles of qualities, and pays no

more attention to substance than if it had never entered his thought.

If we take these chapters as authoritative, we must banish substance

from the sphere of knowledge altogether.

[7] "Essay," Bk. 4, Chap. 2, § 14; Bk. 4, Chap. 4 and Chap. 11.

[8] _Ibid._, Bk. 2, Chap. 12, § 6; Bk. 2, Chap. 23, § 1, with note

(Phila., 1846, p. 183, _et seq._).

[9] See note to § 1, Chap. 23, Bk. 2.

[10] Bk. 4, Chap. 11, _et passim_.

[11] "I confess there is another idea, which would be of general use

for mankind to have, as it is of general talk, as if they had it; and

that is the idea of substance, which we neither have, nor can have,

by sensation or reflection." Bk. 1, Chap. 4, § 18 of the "Essay."

[12] "Essay," Bk. 4, Chaps. 3, 4 and 11.

As another instance of a use of language calculated to produce

confusion, I may offer the following from Sir William Hamilton:

"Whatever we know is not known as it is, but only as it seems to us

to be,"[13]--a use of words which would certainly indicate that the

immediate and mediate objects of knowledge are one. And what would

we infer from such a sentence as this: "Thus the consciousness of

an Inscrutable Power manifested to us through all phenomena, has

been growing ever clearer; and must eventually be freed from its

imperfections. The certainty that on the one hand such a Power exists,

while on the other hand its nature transcends intuition and is beyond

imagination, is the certainty towards which intelligence has from the

first been progressing."[14] Or this: "We are obliged to regard every

phenomenon as a manifestation of some Power by which we are acted upon;

though Omnipresence is unthinkable, yet, as experience discloses no

bounds to the diffusion of phenomena, we are unable to think of limits

to the presence of this Power; while the criticisms of Science teach

us that this Power is Incomprehensible. And this consciousness of an

Incomprehensible Power, called Omnipresent from inability to assign its

limits, is just that consciousness on which Religion dwells."[15]

[13] Lectures on Metaph., VIII, N. Y., 1880, p. 102.

[14] Herbert Spencer, "First Principles." Part I, Chap. V, § 31,

N. Y., 1888, p. 108.

[15] "First Principles." Part I, Chap. V, § 27.

"After concluding that we cannot know the ultimate nature of that

which is manifested to us, there arise the questions--What is it that

we know? In what sense do we know it?"[16] Or what shall one say to

this: "Our consciousness of the unconditioned being literally the

unconditioned consciousness, or raw material of thought, to which in

thinking we give definite forms, it follows that an ever-present sense

of real existence is the very basis of our intelligence."[17]

[16] Part II, Chap. I, § 35.

[17] Part I, Chap. IV, § 26.

Now, if the consciousness of an "inscrutable power" is not the

"inscrutable power" itself; if the existence of such a "power" does

not mean simply its existence in consciousness; if the phenomena

in which, it is assumed, a "power" is manifested, are to be kept

separate in thought from the "power," so that we shall be in no

danger of confounding a consciousness of certain phenomena with

consciousness of an "incomprehensible power;" if our "consciousness

of the unconditioned" is to be kept in mind as signifying merely our

"unconditioned consciousness," and an "ever-present sense of real

existence" as signifying only an ever-present sense of "raw material"

in consciousness; then it is high time that these sentences and all

such as these be re-written with some regard for lucidity, accuracy

and consistency. How can a reader help confounding things when he is

thus taught by the very man whose business it is to distinguish between

them? The blind led by the blind is a cheerful spectacle compared with

this.

Nothing can be more evident than that the man who has abandoned his

original unreflective belief in the singleness of the perceived

object, and has come to believe in it as having one or more "external"

correlates, should keep distinctly in mind that an immediate and a

mediate object are, by hypothesis, two distinct things: that he has

never had any direct experience whatever save of the one; and that

all distinctions that he makes with regard to the other, the very

notions of its existence, reality, and externality, have been drawn

from the sphere of the immediate and carried over to it in thought.

And he should never allow himself to forget, that, when he says he has

passed in thought from the immediate to the mediate object, he cannot

mean literally that his thought is now occupied directly upon this

"external" thing--that it is itself present to mind. He should remember

that he can only mean that he has such an experience as the following:

He has in mind the immediate object, and a mental picture of a

duplicate of this standing in a causal relation to it and represented

by it; or, he has (if a Lockian), in addition to these two, a third

highly vague and indefinite mental image (the idea of "substance"),

which he connects with the image just described, as he has connected

that with the immediate object; or (if a Kantian), he has in mind the

immediate object, and, connected directly with that, such a vague image

as has just been described. This is what he actually has in mind so

far as _objects_ are concerned. He does not, however, merely recognize

the existence in his mind of these different images in their relations

to each other, but he looks upon this mental arrangement as somehow

justified by experience and embodying truth.

When we ask what the word "_justified_" can mean in this connection,

it is not easy to find an answer. Within the sphere of the immediately

known the meaning of the word is plain enough. When I have constructed

in my imagination a certain image or complex of images embodying a

belief as to matter of fact, I say the mental operation is justified

when I can substitute for the idea the percept which it is supposed to

represent, or can know indirectly that this might be done according

to known laws of the appearance and disappearance of percepts. Thus

I perceive the outside of a tree-trunk and form an idea of what lies

under the bark. I have reason to know that by stripping off the

bark I can substitute for the image I have formed the corresponding

percept. And if I see at a distance a similar tree growing upon an

inaccessible cliff, and form an image of what lies under its bark, I

may still regard this as justified by the possibility of referring to

cases in which a similar image, arising out of a similar experience,

has been found to be justified. It is a legitimate inference that, if

circumstances were somewhat different, the proper percept might take

the place of this image too. It is evident, however, that the word

"justified" cannot be used in this or any analogous sense in speaking

of the relation not of an image to a percept, but of an image or a

percept to a something that, by hypothesis, cannot itself enter into

experience at all. What then can the word mean? It at first interests

us to know that "some Snarks are Boojums," but our interest lapses when

we discover that we have absolutely no mark by which we may know a

Boojum from anything else.

But I must not be drawn into digressions. The points with which I am

concerned are these:--FIRST: When a man says he sees this tree or that

house, he ordinarily speaks as if there were but the one object in his

thought. If he distinguishes at all between an immediate and a mediate

object, the language that he uses would not indicate that he does so.

And even after men have entered into lengthy arguments for the purpose

of marking this distinction, and insisting that things are not single

as they seem to the unreflective, they still indulge in this peculiar

use of language, which would imply either that they have forgotten for

the time being their own distinction between the immediate and the

mediate, or that they regard the two as the same in Sense I, and to be

treated as one. Certainly, in their reasonings upon this subject, men

who hold to the two kinds of objects do confound them with one another,

and strengthen their faith in the two by this misconception, as I shall

show later. We have here, then, what we may call a kind of sameness, or

pseudo-sameness, which deserves investigation, and which one should be

careful not to confound with sameness of other kinds. Whether the word

same is commonly applied in the premises is indifferent to my purpose.

In the remainder of the present section I will consider the relation

between the mental representative and its assumed correlatives.

SECOND: If we are to accept not merely the world of objects immediately

known, but also a world or two worlds corresponding to this, and yet

distinct from it, we cannot be sure our list of samenesses is complete

unless we traverse in our search for the different kinds all the

spheres of being in which we believe, and of which we think we can

have some knowledge. In the section following this one I will try to

discover the kinds of sameness which a believer in "external" things

may reasonably attribute to them within their own sphere. In this

there is no question of the relation of something in one sphere to a

correlative something in another.

For the first point. What is in a man's mind when he is thinking of his

percept as having a "real" object corresponding to it, I have shown

to be as follows: He has in mind an immediate object and a duplicate

of this, not necessarily altogether like it, imagined as standing

in a causal relation to it and represented by it. When it occurs to

him that this imagined duplicate is itself an immediate object and

not the "real" one, he does as much for it, and provides it with a

similar duplicate. In every case, when he tries to think of an object

immediately perceived as having a "real" correlate, he simply furnishes

it with an imaginary double in this way. What else is he to do? He

is trying to think of two objects; the "real" object cannot, it is

said, be in the mind; he must then imagine it. If he is a Lockian he

will have in mind the immediate object and two imaginary ones, one

signifying the "real" object as a bundle of qualities, and the other, a

highly vague one, picturing the "substance."

Now, since this is all that can be before the man's mind, any kind of

sameness which concerns the percept and the "real" thing _must mean

to him some relation between the immediate object and the image or

images of which I have spoken_. When this is realized it is seen that

we have here not a new kind of sameness, a distinct experience, but a

kind already discussed. The relation between the immediate object and

the images described is simply that between representative and thing

represented. This I have already examined within the field of what

is recognized as immediately known. Here, too, it would seem that we

are in the field of the immediately known, since we have to do with

percepts and ideas, but though these images are in this field, they are

here, so to speak, under protest, and their framing is supposed to be

justified[18] only by something assumed to be not in this field. When

this something is thought of at all it is thought of in just the way

I have described. This is what thinking it means. Nevertheless, this

duplicate world is assumed to be a world apart, and for this reason I

have considered the sameness of percepts and their corresponding "real"

objects by itself. It gives us sameness in sense seventh.

[18] I have already pointed out the vagueness in this word.

In writing the foregoing I have had in mind chiefly the position of

the Lockian. I need not consider at length that taken by the Kantian,

for what I have said will, with little change, apply to it also. If I

hold to a "noumenon" as corresponding to my "phenomenon," and yet deny

to it all qualities whatsoever, I must, to retain any appearance of

consistency, represent it in my mind in the very vaguest possible way.

Nevertheless, I must represent it, or I am not thinking of it at all,

and I must relate the phenomenon and this vague representation in the

way described. A true consistency would, of course, make impossible the

whole process, for it would make impossible the giving of any quality

at all to the representation, and the putting any relation between it

and the phenomenon. In so dark a night cats do not merely turn grey,

they disappear. On the other hand, if one is too liberal with this

"noumenon," it palpably ceases to be a "noumenon," and degenerates into

something very like a "phenomenon." The illusion must not be lost. Both

these conflicting tendencies may be well illustrated in Mr. Spencer's

"Unknowable." If we really refuse to allow to the consciousness of it

"any qualitative or quantitative expression whatever,"[19] our vague

image wholly disappears and there is nothing left in our consciousness

but the "phenomenon." While if we follow the "First Principles"

in coaxing it back into existence by allowing it reality,[20] and

causality,[21] and a freedom from limits,[22] and printing its name

with a capital letter,[23] as though it were even better than other

things--if we do all this there is danger of the convalescent's

becoming too robust altogether. The problem has its parallel in the

practical problem of paying wages:--one must not pay too little, or he

loses his laborer; nor too much, or he loses his money. The thing is to

find the happy mean which will keep an object of thought before a man's

mind and yet not make him lose all appearance of consistency.

[19] First Principles. Part I, Chap. 4, § 26. N. Y., 1888, p. 91.

[20] _Ibid._ Chap. 4, § 24; Chap. 5, §§ 31, 32, _et passim_.

[21] _Ibid._ Chap. 5, § 31, _et passim_.

[22] _Ibid._ Chap. 4, § 24.

[23] _Ibid._ Chap. 5, § 32, _et passim_.

But in which ever of the ways mentioned a man thinks of "real" things,

he does what I have described. And when he implies that the immediately

known and the "real" are in some sense the same, as he does when he

talks as if there were but the one object, or asserts that we do not

know things as they are in themselves but only as they appear to us;

he really uses the word same in the fifth sense that I have given. The

fact that he is using it to indicate the relation between percepts and

a certain class of ideas which he has come to regard as duplicates of

his percepts does not make the use of the word a new one. Whatever may

be the state of affairs outside of his consciousness, this is all that

takes place within it; and the word same, used in this connection, can

mean no more to him than I have said.

SEC. 9. To avoid needless prolixity I will class together and very

briefly treat of the kinds of sameness which one may attribute

to "external" things. It is not necessary to go at length into

the discussion of these, for since the "external" world, as it is

assumed by those who have faith in it, is, to the man thinking it,

simply a more or less modified duplicate of the world of things

immediately perceived; and since all ground for attributing to it

any determinations at all must be found in that which is immediately

perceived; we may naturally look to find in it nothing that we have

not already found in this immediate world. How, indeed, could anything

else get into it? We cannot have _in_ mind what is by hypothesis _out_

of mind. The "real" world is then, in the mind of the man who thinks

it, a world of imagined objects, and the world of imagination depends

for its material upon the world of sense. A little reflection will show

that the kinds of sameness of these "realities" are only the kinds of

sameness already discussed duplicated, and assumed to belong to a new

world.

1. An "external" quality or group of qualities may be said to be the

_same_ with itself at any one instant. Here we have Sense I carried

over into the field of imagined duplicates.

2. An "external" quality existing at one time may be said to be the

_same_ with an "external" quality existing at another time, to indicate

that the two are similar. The same thing may be true of any group of

qualities. Here we have Sense II.

3. The "external" bundle of qualities, which formed for Locke the

knowable element in a thing or "body," may be regarded as being the

_same_ at two different times--as having, so to speak, a life-history.

Here one is simply calling up in thought the experience described under

Sense III.

4. Two "external" things (bundles of "real" qualities), or two

"external" qualities, existing at one time, may be called the _same_ to

mark similarity. Here we have Sense IV.

5. An "external" thing (in the sense just indicated), or an "external"

quality, may be called the _same_ with its representative. If this

representative be the immediate object of knowledge, we have the

experience described as Sense VII. If it be another "external" thing

or quality, _e. g._, an "external" picture in an "external" mirror, an

"external" statue in "external" marble, etc., we have Sense V.

6. Two men may be said to perceive the _same_ "external" thing. In

saying this one simply calls up in mind the complex described at length

under VI, but makes the duplicate, which is, to him, the thing, stand

in the complex in the place of the percept, this being now regarded as

a mere representative.

7. An "external" thing may be said to be the _same_ with its

representative in consciousness or with the substance or noumenon

assumed to underlie it. Here we have Sense VII.

It would seem scarcely necessary to mention this last, since, if

the representative in consciousness can be called the same with its

"real" correlate, it would seem self-evident that the "real" correlate

may be called the same with it. I add it, however, for the sake of

completeness. It should be noted that in this last kind of sameness

we step over the limits of any one class of being, ideas, things (as

bundles of qualities), or substance. The word is used to denote a

relation between something in one class and a corresponding thing in

another class.

In the foregoing I have been considering the sameness of "real"

or "external" things regarded as bundles of qualities. If one ask

concerning the sameness of Locke's "substance," or the "noumenon" of

other writers, I would say that our notions of this must vary with

the kind of being we allow this nebulous entity. Strict consistency

in dealing with a noumenon as sometimes defined means, of course, its

utter collapse. If, however, we keep anything in mind at all, we must

carry over to it at least the first of the kinds of sameness described.

I do not think it would be hard to show that several other kinds are

carried over in despite of consistency by men who hold to this shadowy

something under one name or another.

As, however, we do not find here any new sense of the word same, but

mere repetition in a new field (if one may call it such), it seems

unnecessary to dwell upon this part of my subject.

I have not discussed at all the sameness of things from the point of

view of an adherent of that Natural Realism which claims that we know

immediately real things and yet holds that real things are not our

perceptions themselves, but something extra-mental. This view is so

incoherent that it is not likely to be taken seriously by men who

have learned to reflect at all. I may say, however, _en passant_, that

it does not add to the kinds of sameness I have described: it merely

confounds them one with another, and falls into the inconsequences

which naturally result from so doing.

SEC. 10. When we come to the question of the sameness of the Self or

Ego we are, if possible, on more debatable ground than heretofore.

The whole subject of our knowledge of the Self lies as yet, in the

opinion of many, very much in the dark. Without undertaking the task of

defining narrowly what this elusive something is, it would seem that I

may safely make concerning it at least the following assertions:

In using the word self, we may have reference either to what is

immediately known as appearing in the circle of consciousness, the

phenomenon, or to a something supposed to lie beyond this sphere and to

be known only through its representative in consciousness.

Now this something beyond may be looked at in various ways. John

Locke, in discussing the not-self, made the three-fold division of

idea, bundle of "real" qualities, and substance. He might with equal

reason have distinguished in a similar way between the self as idea

(the immediately known), the self as a bundle of "real" qualities (not

immediately known), and the self as substance. As a matter of fact,

however, he did not put the not-self and the self upon the same plane.

He seemed to think that we know the self more immediately, and to hold

that it enters consciousness as the bundle of "real" qualities[24]

which, in the case of matter, is assumed to lie beyond. The "substance"

of the self, however, he condemns to outer darkness and the company

of material substance. To me there seems no reason, admitting the

right to pass at all beyond the immediately perceived, for making

the distinction which he does make. And as one, who has followed him

with assent in his treatment of the not-self, may, with some justice

complain of his inconsistency and refuse to follow him here, I mention

the position he might have taken as well as the position he actually

did take with respect to the self and its existences.

[24] Compare Bk. 4, Ch. 9, § 3 of the "Essay," with Bk. 4, Ch. 11,

§§ 1, 4, 7, 8, and 9.

SEC. 11. The word self may then be regarded as referring either:

1. To the self as phenomenon, a something immediately perceived, a part

or the whole of our conscious experience;

2. To a complex of "real" qualities beyond and represented by the self

as it appears in consciousness;

3. To the substance of self, or self as noumenon, a vague and

ill-defined something, supposed to be distinct from and to underlie

phenomena or "real" qualities; or

4. To two, or to all, of these taken together.

If the word is used in the last of these senses any inquiry concerning

sameness must split up its complex meaning and treat separately the

different elements included. It remains, then, to inquire what kinds of

sameness we may attribute to the self in the first three senses given.

I will take them in reverse order.

SEC. 12. With respect to the third sense, which makes it refer to

the "substance" of Locke or the "noumenon" of other writers: all the

difficulties which arise out of the endeavor to attribute sameness of

any kind to any substance or noumenon obtain here also. But it seems

on the surface more glaringly inconsistent in the adherent of noumena

to discriminate between different kinds as admitting of differences of

treatment than it does for him to suppose them capable of treatment

at all. Things that differ cannot be conceived as differing except

in qualities, and here there is question not of qualities but of

noumena. If one is to retain any appearance of consistency, he must

not maintain that the word same is applicable in any given sense to

certain noumena and not to others. If he does so, he openly abandons

his noumena to a phenomenal fate. And, as a matter of fact, I think it

is plain that those believers in noumena, who distinguish them from

one another, yet think of them in just the one way. If we take the

utterances of a good representative of the class, Sir William Hamilton,

we may see that although he distinguishes between the noumenal ego and

the noumenal non-ego, not only do his clearest statements make such

a distinction out of the question, but the distinction drawn is so

vague and insignificant[25] that the two noumena may be thought of and

reasoned about in the one way. Phenomena being abstracted, what was in

his mind when he spoke of the one was probably in no respect different

from what was in his mind when he spoke of the other. In so far, then,

as the noumena themselves are concerned, it would seem that any kind

of sameness which we may predicate of the noumenal not-self we may

predicate on the same ground and with equal justice of the noumenal

self, and _vice versa_. If, however, any sense of the word same marks

a relation between a noumenon and some other thing or things, and if

the two noumena differ as respects this relation, then this kind of

sameness may be attributed to the one and not to the other. It may

be claimed that we indicate just such a relation in using the word

same in Sense VI; and that, whatever one might do, one would under no

circumstances speak of two men as perceiving the same self, noumenal

or any other. I shall discuss this point when I come to discuss the

sameness of self as phenomenon.

[25] Lectures on Metaphysics, VIII, N. Y., 1880, p. 97.

I may add here that when one obliterates the distinction between

noumena by plunging them into the darkness of the "unknowable," there

can, of course, be no question of a new sense of the word same in the

field I am discussing. On the general question of noumenal sameness,

all that it seems to me necessary to say I have said before.

SEC. 13. The second sense of the word self would make it a complex of

"real" qualities beyond, and represented by, the self as it appears

in consciousness. Now, I do not think that the fact that one would

attribute to the self, so considered, one class of qualities, and to

the not-self another class, would, when the two "real" objects are

considered in themselves, prevent one's ascribing to the former all the

kinds of sameness which one may ascribe to the latter, or would justify

the assumption of a new kind of sameness proper only to the former. In

discussing the sameness of "external" things I have not made any one

kind of it dependent upon the peculiar quality of their qualities, if I

may so speak. I considered them only as groups of qualities in general,

supposed to be external to consciousness. The idea of the "real" self

is in its general character essentially similar to that of the "real"

not-self. Provided that the two classes of qualities have enough in

common to be properly called qualities, and to be capable of being

related to each other in groups, they may differ in kind _toto cœlo_

without necessitating a difference of treatment from the point of view

with which I am at present concerned. It is very evident, however,

that those who have thought of the self as a "real" thing, distinct

from consciousness, and yet to be in some way intelligibly represented

in thought, have had a tendency to represent it very much as they

have represented material objects. There has been a general effort to

get rid of the idea of extension, but this has been shown rather in

reducing the size of the object and attributing to it inconsistent

space relations than in denying it such relations altogether. Bishop

Butler's argument for immortality from the indiscerptibility of the

uncompounded shows that he thought of the self as he thought of a

material atom,[26] and Sir William Hamilton's scholastic notion of the

ubiquity of the soul in the bodily organism--"all in the whole and all

in every part"[27]--makes it sufficiently clear that he thought of it

so, too; though, to be sure, such ubiquity would make of it a very

queer atom indeed. If, then, the man, who holds to the self in the

second sense of the word, calls up in using the word a mental complex

like that which represents to him a "real" not-self, there is all the

more reason why we should not expect to find anything in his thought

which would suggest a new kind of sameness within the sphere of the

"real" self. It remains, of course, to notice here, as in the case of

the noumenal self, that any sense of the word same which has reference

not so much to the things under discussion as to the relations of these

things to other things, may, if self and not-self differ as to these

relations, be applicable to the one and not to the other. Thus Sense

VI may be regarded as inapplicable to the "real" self. I will discuss

this point more fully in a few moments. With this one exception we

may, therefore, I think, apply the kinds of sameness enumerated under

Sec. 9 as obtaining in the sphere of "external" things to the "real"

self also, and it would seem that no new kinds are to be added. It is

unnecessary to repeat here the classification already given.

[26] "Analogy," Part 1. Chap. I.

[27] Lectures on Metaphysics, XXV., N. Y., 1880, p. 356. Hamilton's

utterances concerning "reality" are incoherent, and inconsistent.

I do him no injustice, however, if I give the above as "one of his

views."

SEC. 14. We come finally to the self as a something immediately

perceived, the self as phenomenon or idea. I do not mean to use

these names in a question-begging way, and I will try to exhaust all

reasonable possibilities in discussing it and its samenesses.

Now, whatever the self is, it would seem that it must be, in so far

as it is a thing immediately known, either a part or the whole of

consciousness, or one or the other of these regarded in some peculiar

aspect or relation.

If it be a part of consciousness, recognized as distinct from another

part, the non-ego, we may reasonably maintain:

1. That the perceived self is at any moment what it is--is the same

with itself. The question whether it be simple and unanalyzable does

not affect the problem. This is sameness in sense I.

2. That if it be simple and unanalyzable, this simple element of

consciousness may be the same at two different times, and if complex,

two elements or two complexes of elements, belonging to different times

may be the same. This is sameness in sense II.

3. That if we regard the self as an object having a life-history, as

consisting of successive elements united in a series as sense elements

are united in the series which is for us a material object (immediately

known), we may speak of its being the same on two successive days, even

though it exhibit dissimilar qualities, primary reference being had not

to likeness of elements, but to the experience which has been described

at length in discussing sense III.

4. That we may speak of two selves, of two elements of two selves (if

selves be complex), or of two elements of one self (if one self may

contain two such elements), as at any one time the same, to indicate

that they are similar. This is sameness in sense IV. It should be

kept in mind, however, that we never look upon one consciousness as

containing two selves as it contains one self, or as it may contain

two material objects (immediately known). The second self in mind is

recognized as present only as an imagined object. Nevertheless it

would seem quite proper to use the word same to mark this relation of

similarity between the perceived self and an imagined self, just as we

use it to mark a likeness of two material objects, or of one material

object and the memory image of such an object.

5. That we may speak of the self and its representative as the same.

The memory image of a later time may stand for the self as experienced

at an earlier. Unless it be claimed that yesterday's consciousness

of self is actually to-day's consciousness, one must admit that the

self remembered is the self known through its proxy. And one may in

his reasonings about the self use as a symbol the pronoun "I," paying

little attention as he goes along to what it stands for, and yet

knowing it may serve in place of the obscure something it represents.

These are instances of sameness in sense V.

6. That we never use the word same in sense VI in speaking of the self

as we do in speaking of the not-self. We do not say two men perceive

the same self as we say they perceive the same tree or house. The

familiar distinction between the subjective and the objective marks out

the latter as in a sense, peculiar to itself, common and impersonal.

I have already shown what we have in mind when we say two men see the

same material thing. We have a picture of the thing, and of the bodies

of the two men in a certain relation to it; and we imagine a copy of

the thing as in some way connected with each of these bodies, and due

to its relation to the thing. When relations to a material object are

in question all the bodies in a consciousness are on a par. We may

directly perceive the one thing and two or more bodies holding similar

relations to it. But it is not so in the case of selves. The one self

that we find in each consciousness seems to be peculiarly related to

one body to the exclusion of others. And as we have not, in the case of

this self, the conditions which led us to mark the similar relations

of two human bodies (our representatives of the men) to one material

object, by saying two men see the same thing, we, of course, do not

say that two men see the same self. The word same, in sense VI, we may

regard, then, as inapplicable to the self as immediately known.[28]

This appears to be due, however, not to the nature of this self in

itself considered, but to its peculiar relation to the other things in

a consciousness.

[28] Owing to the ambiguity already pointed out as existing in terms

which stand for our objects of knowledge and our knowledge of these

objects, it would seem almost impossible to avoid misconception

without unendurable reiteration. In the above paragraph, by the words

"body," "object," "self," etc., I always refer to things immediately

known.

Moreover, since the other two selves, the self as group of "real"

qualities and the self as noumenon, are to us, as it were, shadows

cast by the self immediately known--assumed to exist only because this

is known to exist, and thought of as "present" only because this is

known to be present--since, I say, these two selves hold in our thought

this peculiar relation of dependence upon the self in consciousness,

it is to be expected that we never find any one speaking of two men

as seeing the same "real" self as one might readily speak of two men

as seeing the same "real" tree. One says he has evidence that two men

see the same "real" tree, when he has or can have in consciousness an

immediately perceived tree and two immediately perceived human bodies

in a certain relation to it. If no one had ever had this experience in

the sphere of the immediately known, we have no reason to think any one

would ever have thought of applying the phrase in question to a tree

mediately known. And as we do not have a similar experience touching

the self in consciousness, it is only natural to find that no one

applies the phrase to any self out of consciousness. When things differ

their shadows ought to differ too. Sameness in sense VI we may regard,

then, as not attributable to self in any of the three senses of the

word.

7. That, finally, there seems no more reason why one should not call

the self as immediately known the same with the self as "external"

thing, or with the self as noumenon, than the not-self as similarly

perceived the same with the not-self as similarly inferred. The

supposed relationships are in the two cases exactly alike. Here we have

sameness in sense VII.

SEC. 15. If we claim that by the self as immediately known we

understand not a part but the whole of consciousness, we should

seem, unless we in some way modify our statement, to obliterate the

distinction between self and not-self. Still, taking the words simply,

and assuming that we mean by self all that is immediately known, we do

not find that this will necessitate any important difference in the

discussion of its samenesses. Consciousness as a whole is certainly

what it is, or the same with itself, at any instant: two elements in it

belonging to different times, or two complexes of elements belonging to

different times may be the same, as being alike; it may be regarded as

having a life history, and may from this point of view be called the

same at different times without regard to similarity; two simultaneous

elements or complexes of elements in it may be called the same to mark

the fact that they resemble each other, or it, as a whole, may for the

same reason be called the same with another consciousness (imagined);

it and its representative (for example, the memory-image of its former

self), may be called the same; and we may use the word same to indicate

its relation to its supposed "real" correlate in an extra-consciousness

world, whether we make this "thing" or "noumenon."

It will be observed that in the preceding I have allowed the self,

considered as the whole of consciousness, all the kinds of sameness

upon my list except the sixth. There is, however, no objection,

except that arising from oddity of expression, against allowing it

this kind of sameness too. If we really mean by the self the whole of

consciousness, then everything immediately perceived is a part of the

self. If then, it is proper to say two men see the same tree, one

may go on to say, if one choses, that two men see a part of the one

self. Such an expression could, of course, be used only in speaking of

the objective part of this self, the part which those who distinguish

between ego and non-ego call the not-self. It is needless to say that

no one ever thinks of talking in this way. I merely mention the point

for the sake of completeness in my analysis.

SEC. 16. If by the self we do not understand a part or the whole of

consciousness taken simply, but the one or the other of these regarded

from some peculiar point of view, does it affect the question of the

kinds of sameness we may attribute to it? It may be asserted, for

example, that when we are thinking of the world of things immediately

perceived as conditioned by its relation to a particular organism (also

immediately perceived)--as duplicated by a pressure on the eyes, as

annihilated by a blow on the head--we make these things mental, and

properly include them under the head of self; whereas, when we abstract

these same things in thought from the organism, and, so to speak,

objectify them, we properly include them under the head of not-self. We

are thus to regard the one thing as an element of the self or of the

not-self, according to the light in which it is viewed. But it does not

seem to me that if we take the word self in the sense just described,

or in any analogous sense, we need alter the list of samenesses already

given. We are still considering a part or the whole of consciousness,

and the fact that we are viewing it in one light rather than another

would not apparently influence in any way its kinds of sameness.

SEC. 17. This would certainly appear to be the case if we take the

words _part_ and _whole_ of consciousness in their common acceptation,

as denoting a portion or the totality of mental elements (sensations,

feelings, volitions, ideas), in their various relations to each other.

It remains, however, to consider a position, which, it may be claimed,

is not covered by the foregoing classification of possible positions,

when the words "part" and "whole" are thus understood. Suppose that

one distinguishes in the Kantian fashion between the _form_ and the

_matter_ of what appears in consciousness, and maintains that the

formal element, the arrangement, or "unity" of consciousness is to

be attributed to mind, or, if you please, is mind, and for "mind" I

may here write "self," while the matter or content, the raw material

to be elaborated and related, is to be distinguished from this as a

thing apart. Can it be shown that the above given kinds of sameness

have significance in regard to the self so understood? Whether we

call this a _part_ of consciousness or not will depend on our use of

terms. It is not a part, as commonly understood, nor is it the whole of

consciousness.

Now, it has seemed to me that those who have laid most emphasis upon

this formal element in consciousness have been very vague in their

treatment of it. On the part of many writers there is little evidence

of even an attempt at scientific exactitude. And yet it does not

appear that the subject admits of treatment only in this loose and

unsatisfactory way. If we can discuss it at all, there seems no reason

why, with increasing knowledge, we may not expect to discuss it with

accuracy and precision.

If we consider this formal element of consciousness in a concrete

instance, it may help us to classify our ideas concerning it. Let

us imagine three points in such relations to each other that when

each is connected with the other two by straight lines we have an

equilateral triangle. The three points are, of course, what they are at

any instant. And whatever a relation may be, if the mutual relations

of these three points are capable of being considered apart from the

points, as a distinct element in consciousness, there appears no reason

why we should not assert with equal justice that these relations are

what they are at any instant. When we take note of the points we take

note of the relations, and we do not confound the one with the other.

And just as I may say that such a set of three points imagined or

observed now is the same with another and a similar set imagined or

observed at some former time, meaning by the word same to indicate

similarity, and not sameness in the strict sense mentioned just above;

so there appears no reason at all why I may not say that the mutual

relations of the one set of points are the same with the mutual

relations of the other, making here, too, the distinction between

sameness in the former, stricter, sense, and sameness in this second

sense of similarity. If what is contained in a consciousness at any one

instant, is, _ipso facto_, to be distinguished from what is contained

in it at any other instant, there seems equal reason for making this

distinction in the material element and in the formal. It is quite

true that men are not accustomed to carrying this distinction into the

region of form. The whole history of the dispute as to universals is

evidence of the way in which men have confounded the kinds of sameness;

but I fancy that even those who would clearly recognize that red

color imagined yesterday and red color imagined to-day are the same

merely in being similar, or in standing in a relation of original and

representative, would yet not think of distinguishing triangularity

noticed yesterday from triangularity noticed to-day, and marking that

they are not the same in the first and strictest sense of the word.

And yet it would be hard to show why two indistinguishably similar

color sensations, existing in consciousness at different times, are to

be kept apart in thought and recognized as two sensations, while two

occurrences of the consciousness of triangularity (I use the clumsy

phrase to avoid any question-begging word), are not to be distinguished

as separate in a similar way. To say that the formal element is not

a thing, but an activity, does not alter the position. If an activity

is enough of a thing to be talked about and distinguished from other

things, we may surely recognize an activity in consciousness yesterday

as numerically different from an activity in consciousness to-day.

Furthermore, if, instead of taking as simple an instance of form as

the relations of the three points I have been discussing, I choose to

take the sum total of the relations between the material elements (here

I use _material_ as correlative to _formal_), which go to make up the

life history of a material object, say a tree, why may I not speak of

the formal tree as being the same at two times, meaning thereby that

the group of relations co-existent at any one time may be regarded as

representative of any other group belonging to the one series or of

the whole series? To be sure, I am not justified by common usage in

thus speaking, since common usage marks only distinctions which are

practically important, and by the words "the same tree" includes both

form and matter. Nevertheless, I can see no reason why, if this element

of form does admit of being considered apart, it is not at least

possible to find in this field the kind of sameness we have in mind

when we say that we have seen on two successive days the same tree.

Again, if I can speak of two simultaneous sensations of redness in one

consciousness (_e. g._, the two halves of a red surface), as the same,

meaning to indicate simply similarity, why may I not also speak of two

simultaneous "experiences of triangularity" in one consciousness as the

same, and keep clearly in mind here, too, that I mean only to indicate

similarity? If I can speak of a sensation or a complex of sensations

in one consciousness as the same with a similar sensation or group of

sensations in another, and yet not forget that I am dealing with two

things, why may I not do as much for two similar relations or groups

of relations in two consciousnesses? If in the one case I do not

confound sameness in the sense of similarity with sameness of the kind

we mean when we say each thing is at each instant the same with itself,

why should I do so in the other case? If, I repeat, the formal element

in consciousness is enough of a thing to be distinguished from the

material element and discussed, there appears no reason why it should

not be open to distinctions of this kind.

And when I call up in memory a triangle once seen, the memory image

would seem to stand as a representative of the original in both its

elements, form and matter. In neither should the representative be

confounded with the original. If we may use the word same to indicate

this peculiar relation of representation between two things yet

recognized as two, it would seem only just to allow this distinction as

much in the case of triangularity as in the case of redness or blueness.

As to the sixth kind of sameness. May we grant this to the self, if by

self we mean the formal element of consciousness? I have said a little

way back, before taking up the distinction of formal and material,

that, if we make the word self cover all the immediately known, there

is nothing to prevent one's saying that two men see a part of the

same self, for material objects (immediately known) would have to be

regarded as such parts. And here it is evident that if we make self to

cover the whole of the formal element in a consciousness, it of course

includes the formal element in what we may call the objective side of

consciousness--the side which is, in some sense of the words, common

and impersonal. Now, we do say that two men see the same tree, and by

tree, the man who distinguishes between form and matter means a certain

complex containing both formal and material elements. These elements

he believes he can distinguish from one another, and pay attention

predominantly now to the one, and now to the other. Does it not seem

to follow that a man may as truly be said to see the formal element as

the material, and that two men who see the same tree may with justice

be said to see the same shape or arrangement of parts? In other words,

may we not apply the sixth sense of the word same to the formal element

in consciousness if this element is a thing capable of treatment at

all? And if this formal element in a tree seen by two men is a part of

the self, why may we not say that two men see a part of the same self,

even though we make self mere form? It would sound very odd to say so,

of course, but that should not weigh with a philosopher, if consistency

require it.

Finally, if I may call an immediately perceived object the same with

its supposed "external" correlate, not confounding the two, but

merely marking by the word a peculiar instance of the representative

relation, why may I not, if I believe that "external" things stand in

"real" relations to each other truly represented by our perceptions

of things and their relations--why, in this case, may I not speak of

the relations, "external" and "internal," as the same, without on that

account forgetting that I am pointing out a relation between two things

(if I may thus speak of relations), numerically different? Are they not

as different as the "matter" of consciousness and its correlate in the

"outer" world?

SEC. 18. In the foregoing I have endeavored to make my list of the

kinds of sameness complete. I can think of nothing that has been

overlooked; but as I have been trying to force a path through a thicket

few have made any sustained effort to penetrate, it is quite possible

my map of the ground may need emendation. I shall be very glad of any

criticism which will help me to improve it. And as the many divisions

made, and the many distinctions drawn, may very possibly tend to

produce in one who has followed the discussion thus far, a state of

mind akin to that of the "true-begotten" Gobbo, when he was obligingly

directed to the Jew's house by his hopeful son, a short summary of the

results obtained may serve to facilitate apprehension and intelligent

criticism.

What has been done is this:

I began by considering the kinds of sameness of things immediately

known, leaving out of consideration for the time being the sameness of

the self or ego. This resulted in the following kinds:

I. Any mental element or complex of mental elements may be said to be

the same with itself at any instant.

II. Any mental element or complex of mental elements in existence at

one time may be called the same with a mental element or complex of

mental elements existing at another time, to indicate that the two are

similar.

III. We may say that we perceive the same object (complex of mental

elements) at two different times, when we do not mean that what is

actually experienced on the two occasions is the same in either of the

preceding senses; but only that the two experiences are terms in a

certain series, the whole of which may be regarded as represented by

any part. In this sense does one see the same tree on two succeeding

days.

IV. Any two mental elements or complexes of mental elements in

consciousness at the one time may be called the same to mark the fact

that they are alike.

V. Any mental element or complex of mental elements may be called the

same with its representative, whether this representative resemble it

or not.

VI. When a man has learned from experience of his own body (as a thing

immediately known) that a consciousness of his body in a certain

peculiar relation to a given object (complex of mental elements) is a

presupposition to a consciousness of the object, and wishes to mark

the fact that he is perceiving or imagining two human bodies in this

relation to a single object, and connecting in thought with each of

them a picture of the object, he may say that he is perceiving or

imagining two men seeing the same object. This sense of the word same

obviously expresses quite a complex thought.

VII. In addition to these kinds of sameness found within the sphere of

the immediately known, we obtain one kind by stepping beyond it, which,

since we step beyond it, so to speak, with only one foot, may be here

mentioned as belonging at least partially to the world of immediate

objects. When we have come to believe that things in consciousness

have their correlates in a world outside of consciousness, we may

speak of the things in consciousness as the same with their "external"

correlates; or, at any rate, we may talk of them as if they were the

same in some sense of the word which will allow us to include the two

(or three) distinct things under one name, and treat them as one. This

is constantly done. The importance of remembering that we have really

more than one thing to consider, it would seem scarcely necessary to

emphasize. How far this is really a new kind of sameness I discussed at

some length.

After having marked these seven kinds of sameness as having to do with

the immediately known, I proceeded to consider the kinds of sameness

which may obtain in a world or worlds beyond consciousness. It was

pointed out that one may look upon the "external" in three ways. One

may believe in "external" things as merely bundles of "real" qualities,

and may stop there: or one may believe in such bundles of "real"

qualities, and in addition hold to "substance" or "substratum" as an

obscure something implied by these "real" qualities: or, lastly, one

may hold that the only correlate of the thing in consciousness is

"noumenon," a thing not distinguishable from the "substance" above

mentioned.

It was then shown that a realm of "external" things, consisting of

bundles of "real" qualities in a world beyond consciousness, would,

since it is to the man thinking it merely a duplicate of the immediate

world, admit of the existence of all the kinds of sameness above

enumerated, and would not furnish any one kind which might increase the

list. And with respect to the "external" as noumenon, it was stated

that if the noumenal be represented to the mind at all, at least the

first kind of sameness must be attributed to it, and that other kinds

will be, in proportion to the degree of clearness allowed this vague

and inconsistent entity. No new kind of sameness need, however, be

looked for in this field. If one hold to the "external" in both kinds,

he must, of course, search three distinct realms of being before he

can be sure that he has not overlooked any legitimate sense of the

word same. As a result of the foregoing analysis we may maintain

that, whatever be his belief as to ideas, things, and noumena, his

search will not result in more than the seven kinds of sameness I have

given. In the assumed new fields we find mere repetition. The pure

Idealist would reduce the list to six by dropping off the seventh kind

altogether.

Next, as to the sameness of the Self or Ego. It was pointed out that

one may take the word self to mean: (1) the self in consciousness,

or as phenomenon; (2) the self as bundle of "real" qualities out of

consciousness; (3) the self as "substance" or "noumenon;" (4) two of

these, or all of these, taken together.

It was said that as the fourth sense is sufficiently discussed in

examining the first three, it would not be separately considered. The

three remaining senses were then taken up in reverse order. The third

and the Second were found to furnish no new kind of sameness, and to

be on a par with the corresponding senses of the word "not-self,"

except as touching the sixth kind of sameness. As respects this, it

was admitted that no one would speak of two men as perceiving the same

self, whether as bundle of "real" qualities or as noumenon. It was

remarked, however, that this is due not to a difference in the self

and not-self in themselves considered, but to a difference in their

relation to other things in a consciousness.

The self in consciousness, or as immediately known, was then discussed.

It was stated that we may safely assume this to be either a part or

the whole of consciousness, or the one or the other of these in some

peculiar aspect or relation. Self, viewed as a part of consciousness,

was found to furnish no new kind of sameness, and was found to admit of

all the kinds discovered except the sixth; this one being inadmissible

from the fact that when we make the self a part of consciousness we

always make it the subjective part and not the objective. Self, viewed

as the whole of consciousness, was likewise found to furnish no new

kind of sameness, and it was found to admit of all the seven kinds

discovered--even of the sixth, though in a modified way, since this

kind can belong only to a part of the self, the objective part, which

is in some sense common and impersonal. It may, to be sure, be objected

that it would be contrary to common usage to speak of two men as seeing

the same self in any sense of that word; but in making the self the

whole of consciousness one has already abandoned the common standpoint,

and one may as well be consistent in carrying out the consequences.

Assuming the self to be not a part or the whole of consciousness

simply, but regarded in some peculiar aspect or relation, was not found

to be significant as concerns kinds of sameness.

It still remained to consider a possible position; that of the man

who distinguishes between the formal and the material element in

consciousness, and identifies self or mind with the former. The formal

element of consciousness is not a part of consciousness as the word

part is commonly used, nor is it the whole of consciousness, in the

ordinary acceptation of the word whole. And though this view might

very well have been brought under a former head by stretching a little

the meaning of the word part, yet such is its importance that I chose

rather to omit it when discussing self as a part of consciousness

(there using the word part in a limited sense), and to take it up later

by itself.

It was insisted that if the formal element in consciousness is

enough of a thing to be distinguished from something else, and to

be discussed, it is enough of a thing to admit of distinctions and

differences much as other things do. After examination it appeared, as

a matter of fact, that there is no reason why the believer in "form"

should not attribute to it all of the seven kinds of sameness before

described--even (in the modified way described a moment ago) the sixth

kind. And it also appeared that no new kind of sameness is discoverable

in this field. With this closed the search for samenesses.

It will be observed that we have passed in review the self and the

not-self as immediately known, the self and the not-self as bundles of

"real" qualities out of consciousness, and the self and the not-self as

noumenon or substance. I know of no other field in which the search may

be prosecuted, unless such be invented gratuitously by increasing the

"layers" of being in a way no one seems inclined to increase them. And

in view of the fact that the samenesses found in any "layer" below the

first seem to be only repetitions of what we find in that one, we could

have no reason to hope that any such needless increase in strata could

add a single new kind of sameness to those described.

SEC. 19. Now that we have obtained a list of the different kinds of

sameness, we may pass our eye over it with a view to discovering what

the various kinds have in common, and what is the reason that we

express such diverse experiences by the use of the one word. Such an

examination reveals the fact that the common notion which unites them

is the idea of similarity. In some cases this notion lies more in the

foreground than in others, but in all cases it is present, and forms

the bond of union. I will run through the list and point this out,

beginning, however, with the second kind, and reserving the first for

discussion after the others.

II. A mere mention of the second kind of sameness is, in this

connection, sufficient. Two mental experiences are there avowedly

called the same to mark similarity.

III. When we speak of the same object as perceived on two occasions, we

do not, as has been noticed, mean that what is actually in the sense at

the two different times is similar. Nevertheless, we find here, too,

the notion of similarity, for the two experiences are not considered

merely in themselves, but as elements in a group or series, and as

each representing the whole series. When, therefore, we have the two

experiences, we regard ourselves as having in them two experiences

of the one series; which means, to be more explicit, that we have in

mind on the two occasions two complexes which are similar, and which,

when thought of together, are related to each other as the memory

image and its original are related. Here the likeness lies in what is

represented, not in the representatives.

IV. As in the second kind of sameness, so in the fourth, the reference

to similarity is unmistakable. We call qualities or things the same

when they are of the one kind, when they are observed to resemble each

other.

V. The relation of representative and thing represented evidently

implies the notion of similarity. It is quite true that we often

recognize as in this relation things that we do not think of as

being similar at all, and yet a little reflection will show that one

thing can stand for another only _in so far_ as it resembles it. The

resemblance may lie in the qualities of the things in themselves

considered, or it may lie in external relations of which the things

are capable, or functions which they may serve. The very notion of a

proxy is a something which, for the purpose in hand, may be regarded as

capable of assuming the functions of another. In so far as it can do

this it is like the other. Things wholly different (if things could be

wholly different) could not represent each other.

VI. When a man thinks of two other men as perceiving the same object,

he must recognize, if he reflect, that he has in mind a picture of

the object, of two human bodies in a peculiar relation to it, and two

images of the object somehow connected with these bodies. He need

not think of these images as wholly resembling his picture of the

object or each other. He does, indeed, make them more or less like his

picture of the object, but what is prominent in his mind is the thought

of them as representatives, as related to and giving information

concerning the object. I say concerning the object, but this phrase is

ambiguous. If the man under discussion believes in "real" objects in an

extra-consciousness world, he will look upon the images as representing

such a "real" object; though, of course, his guarantee for this

"real" object, and all his information concerning, it must be found

in his picture of the object, and this, or its copy, will stand for

the "real" object in any mental complex he may construct. If the man

be an Idealist, accepting only what can be found in a consciousness,

he will look upon the two images as related to his picture of the

object and representative of that. In any case he must regard them

as representatives, and in this sense the same with the thing they

represent. The notion of similarity which is at the bottom of this idea

of representative and thing represented is then implied in sameness of

the sixth kind also.

VII. And since those who distinguish between the immediate and the

mediate objects of knowledge make the former representative of the

latter, we have evidently this implied notion of similarity in the

seventh kind of sameness as well as in the sixth. The mediate object

is said to be known _through_ the immediate: that is, the qualities

and relations of the one are made to stand for and serve in place of

the qualities and relations of the other. This they can do, of course,

only in so far as the two sets of qualities and relations are similar.

It is easy enough to see that this notion of similarity is present

when we think of an idea or complex of ideas as representing a "real"

thing beyond consciousness, and giving information concerning it. When,

however, we sublimate our "real" thing into a noumenon and strip it of

the determinations which, taken together, make up our idea of a thing,

we destroy, if we are consistent and thorough-going, all notion of

similarity between the two; but in doing this we destroy our noumenon

altogether. If, for instance, we refuse to allow to our notion of a

thing "any qualitative or quantitative expression whatever," we cannot

think of the thing as having reality or existence, or any mark by which

it is to be distinguished from nothing at all. In this case the idea is

no longer representative, for it has nothing to represent. If, on the

other hand, we do not wholly destroy the noumenon, but still allow it a

diluted existence of an indefinite kind, in so far as it has this, and

can be represented in mind at all, it resembles the idea, and just so

far may the idea stand as its representative.

I have already pointed out that several of those who pin their faith to

"external" realities seem to apprehend at times but dimly, if at all,

that the relation of phenomenon and noumenon, or of idea and "real"

thing, is that of representative and thing represented, and that we

have here two things and not one. Certainly they sometimes pass from

one to the other without rhyme or reason, and apparently in complete

unconsciousness of the fact that they have made any change at all.

If, for the time being, they really take the two for one, they are

not thinking of the seventh kind of sameness, but of another kind. As

this is done through mere inadvertence and looseness of reasoning, and

cannot be justified on their own assumptions, it is not worth while to

dwell upon it farther. Where one really has in mind the seventh kind of

sameness, the elements I have mentioned will be found in it.

I. Finally, we come to the perplexing case that I postponed at the

outset. What has sameness of the first kind in common with the rest?

How can we speak of similarity when strictly one thing is in question?

Not one thing in the loose sense in which we call a material object

one thing in its successive states, nor one in the sense in which

the memory image and its original are one, but one thing as a single

element of knowledge is itself at any one instant? How can the idea of

likeness hold here? Dundreary's bird flocking all by itself would seem

to have found its philosophical prototype.

It may be said that though the thing in question is strictly one, yet

we divide it from itself in thought and then affirm it of itself. We

give expression to the logical law of identity by saying that x is

x. But here the difficulty meets us that, if we are really talking

about only the one x, we have said quite all we have to say in merely

saying x; while if, to complete our thought, we must add the second

x, we have not an identical proposition, in any strict sense of the

word, but a synthetic one. It is easy enough in words to divide a

"thing" from "itself," since the words "thing" and "itself" are two,

and may readily be distinguished. In the same way it is easy in words

to affirm a thing to be and not to be at the one time. There is no

law to prevent one's stringing sounds together as he may please. But

if one is interested not in the mere symbols, but in that which they

are supposed to represent, one must see that the expression "x is x,"

to be a significant proposition, must have a subject and a predicate,

and affirm a relation between them. Here we have, by hypothesis,

strictly one thing for subject and predicate. The proposition "x is

x" must then consist of one thing and a relation between it--which

is about as significant as the statement that a door may consist of

one side and a relation between it. Between what? One side.[29] Every

form of proposition employed to give expression to the law of identity

implies this difficulty. Whether we say "x is x," or "whatever is

is," or "everything is identical with itself," our proposition, taken

literally, is either useless (since we have said all we have to say in

mentioning the subject alone), or untrue (since we add a new element in

adding the predicate).

[29] This abnormal door has its parallel in the now discredited

_causa sui_. Note the following from Descartes: "De même, lorsque

nous disons que Dieu est par soi, nous pouvons aussi à la vérité

entendre cela négativement, comme voulant dire qu'il n'a point de

cause; mais si nous avons auparavant recherché la cause pourquoi

il est ou pourquoi il ne cesse point d'être, et que, considérant

l'immense et incompréhensible puissance qui est contenue dans son

idée, nous l'ayons reconnue si pleine et si abondante qu'en effet

elle soit la vraie cause pourquoi il est, et pourquoi il continue

ainsi toujours d'être, et qu'il n'y en puisse avoir d'autre que

celle-là, nous disons que Dieu est _par soi_, non plus négativement,

mais au contraire très positivement. Car, encore qu'il n'est pas

besoin de dire qu'il est la cause efficiente de soi-même, de peur que

peut-être on n'entre en dispute du mot; néanmoins, parce que nous<

voyons que ce qui fait qu'il est par soi, ou qu'il n'a point de cause

différente de soi-même, ne procède pas du néant, mais de la réelle et

véritable immensité de sa puissance, il nous est tout a fait loisible

de penser qu'il fait en quelque façon la même chose a l'égard de

soi-même que la cause efficiente à l'égard de son effet, et partant

qu'il est par soi positivement."--Réponses aux Premières Objections.

It is then sufficiently evident that the forms used to express the

logical law of identity do not, taken strictly, express at all the kind

of sameness with which we are now concerned, but, on the contrary,

something very different. We are considering a sameness in which there

is no duality whatever, but our expressions would seem to have no

meaning except as indicating a relation between two. They are then

significant, not as _expressing_ sameness of the first kind, but as

_suggesting_ it, and this they certainly serve to do. The reason for

this I shall try to give in a moment.

It has been said that in the other kinds of sameness we always find

the notion of similarity. When, however, we distinguish two things

as two and yet recognize them as similar, we must have what I may

call a mixed experience of likeness and unlikeness. In any two things

compared, the degrees of likeness and unlikeness may vary, and we

may fix attention upon similarities or differences. In proportion to

the attention given to dissimilar elements will the two objects be

clearly distinguished from each other and discriminated as two. If the

purpose in hand does not require a careful attention to differences,

and if what is prominent in mind is the likeness of the two objects,

the sense of duality may fall into the background, and the man pass

readily from one object to the other with little consciousness that

he has made a change. As I now look at the two ink-stands on my desk,

I clearly recognize them as two and yet as of the one kind. Here I

am as distinctly aware that they are two as I am that they are in

some respects the same. But in some of the kinds of sameness I have

described this sense of duality falls more into the shade. When I

speak of seeing the same ink-stand twice, or when I call up in memory

an ink-stand once seen, I am likely, unless I take particular pains

to reflect upon my mental operation, to have but a dim realization of

the fact that I have two distinct things to deal with. How those who

distinguish between the immediate and the mediate objects of knowledge

have a tendency to forget their distinction, and to pass unconsciously

from one to the other, I have dwelt upon sufficiently.

Suppose, now, that from two objects which we recognize as similar

and yet distinct, we abstract one by one the elements which differ.

So long as there is any difference left, we still have "identity in

diversity"--similarity in the ordinary sense of the term, which implies

a recognition of two things as two. When, however, the last difference

disappears, all sense of duality must disappear with it, for any

division or distinction within what remains is inadmissible. Things

which are distinguished are distinguished through some difference.

A sense of duality implies a discrimination between two, and where

it is impossible to discriminate duality vanishes. Similarity, as we

commonly use the word, must then disappear with the disappearance of

all dissimilarity between two objects. I say "between two objects" in

default of a better expression, for, of course, we have at this point

no longer two objects. My meaning is, however, sufficiently plain.

A sense of duality implies difference, and similarity, as commonly

understood, implies duality. The similarity will then take itself off

with the last difference.

It may be objected that _a consciousness of duality_ and _a

consciousness of similarity_ are only possible on the ground that

I mention, but that duality and similarity themselves may really

obtain when no difference between two is perceptible. But a moment's

reflection will make it plain that one who speaks thus is simply

supplying in himself the elements that he is supposing absent in the

case of another. If he uses the words "duality" and "similarity," and

they really mean anything to him, they imply all that I have said. He

cannot represent to himself two things at all without distinguishing

them from each other, and he can not distinguish them from each other

unless they differ in some way. If, then, he speak of two things as

being two and yet completely indistinguishable, he is, taken literally,

talking nonsense. He may, of course, mean the misleading phrase to be

understood as indicating something not actually expressed by the words.

He may mean to point out that, under certain circumstances, in which he

has an experience which he calls a recognition of two objects as two

and as similar, he has reason to think another mind has an experience

partly like and partly unlike his own--like in as much as it contains

what corresponds to that which is _common_ to the two objects he has

in mind; unlike in as much as it contains nothing which corresponds to

the elements which make it possible for him to recognize two objects.

It is this that is in his mind when he speaks of thinking of two

objects as really two and yet indistinguishable to this man or that.

If, however, the expression "two things may be indistinguishable" is

used to indicate this experience, it should be carefully borne in mind

that the proposition must not be taken literally, for the good reason

that the subject and predicate are not in the one consciousness. The

"two objects" are in the mind of Smith, and the "indistinguishable"

element in the mind of Jones. When we speak of two men as seeing the

same thing, I have shown that we are using the word same in a looser

sense which should never be confounded with the stricter sense.

Strictly speaking, then, the "two things" are never indistinguishable,

but that which corresponds to the two things in a consciousness from

which all recognition of duality is absent. That one man may have a

consciousness of duality while another man has not, and that these two

experiences may be related as the experiences of different minds are

related when we say they are experiencing the same thing, no one would

care to dispute. Should a man say that he can think of himself as

unable to distinguish two things which are nevertheless two, the case,

would not be materially different. The man cannot, of course, think of

_the two things_ as indistinguishable, but he may think of two things

and connect with this thought the thought of himself as having an

experience in which there is no consciousness of duality.

But, it may be insisted, we are still only talking about consciousness;

let us come to "real" things. Suppose no one able to distinguish

between them, abstract all consciousness of difference, would not

two "real" things remain two, however we might confound them? Can a

thing in one place be a thing in another place, however closely it may

resemble it, or however ignorant we may be?

To this I answer that when one speaks of _two_ "real" things the words

only mean something to him because he has present in mind what I have

said must be present if one is to have a consciousness of duality. A

"thing in one place" and a "thing in another place" are to him two

simply because he thinks them as differing--in place. When one has come

to the conclusion that he must duplicate his experience, distinguish

between the world of immediate and the world of mediate objects, and

place the latter in a region "outside," there is nothing to prevent him

from thinking of two "real" things as two, although all distinctions

within the field of immediate objects have been obliterated. Still,

in thinking these "real" things as two, he does just what he does in

thinking two immediate objects as two--he recognizes difference. The

twoness depends upon difference as much in the one case as in the

other, and to speak of two objects in a "real" world as two and yet

having no differing element would be to use words without meaning. In

talking about a "real" world, if we are really to talk and not merely

to utter a series of sounds, our words must be significant. To say

"this or that may be in a 'real' world, though we may not be able to

conceive it," would, if "this" or "that" implies a contradiction, be

to say nothing. The fact is that this "external" world, as we think

it, implies the notions of before and after, in this place and that,

all the distinctions and differences which make it to us a world of

distinct objects. Of course it follows that things in the "external"

world are thought as distinct from each other, but this does not affect

my statement that distinction is impossible without difference.

We may, then, have a series of experiences, beginning with one in

which two objects are recognized as similar and yet are very clearly

distinguished as two objects, continued in others in which the sense

of duality falls more and more into the background, and ending in

one in which there is no consciousness of duality at all. The last

of these experiences is not wholly different from the others. There

is in it no experience of similarity in so far as this word is used

to express identity in difference, or a relation between two. There

can be no such relation unless there are two, and here there are not

two. But it should be marked that this experience differs from the

others, not in the element which has led us to declare two objects

similar--the element which they have in common--but in that which has

led us to declare them two and different. It is by adding to this last

experience, so to speak, that we get the others. They contain it and

more. Usage will not allow us to apply the term similarity in speaking

of an experience in which two things are not distinguished, and this is

proper enough; but it should never be forgotten that this experience is

at the bottom of all our experiences of similarity--is, so to speak,

their common core. When, therefore, I said some pages back that all

the kinds of sameness under discussion contain the idea of similarity,

I was using the word in a certain broad sense to indicate that which

is the ground of all our experiences of similarity, and is also found

in the first kind of sameness on the list. I preferred to use there

the word similarity, because it was easy to show that this notion is

really contained in six of the seven uses of the word same, and it was

convenient afterward to show the connection between the first kind of

sameness and the notion of similarity.

And now it is not difficult to guess why we employ such expressions as

we do to indicate strict identity. If I habitually use the proposition

"x is y" to indicate a relation between two things having similar

elements and yet regarded as distinct, and look upon the proposition

as justified by the similar elements, observing that, these remaining

unchanged, the dissimilar elements may be very variable without

affecting the truth of the proposition, what more natural than that I

should go on using the propositional form when the dissimilar elements

have diminished to zero--when the proposition has become "x is x"? To

be sure, no one can take such a proposition literally, any more than

one can soberly believe that one divided by zero results in infinity.

Such expressions have their use and value, but they must be properly

understood. If one uses the expression "x is x" to emphasize the fact

that one is not to pass from x to any y or z--that one is to rule out

all distinction or sense of difference, the use cannot be harmful.

And the use of the propositional form has this great convenience: it

puts a period, so to speak, to one's thinking, and prevents one from

casting about for a completion of the thought. If one merely say to me

"x," I shall probably take it as a subject and busy myself to find a

predicate. If he say "x is x," he says really no more than x, but he

makes me fix my thoughts upon x alone.

SEC. 20. In the foregoing search for the element that the kinds of

sameness have in common, I have had in mind chiefly the samenesses of

things immediately known. It is not necessary to repeat the search in

the field of the "external." We have but the seven kinds of sameness,

and whatever may be the things that are the same in these several ways,

the elements I have indicated must be present if our words are to be

significant. But one thing remains for me to do in this part of my

monograph, and that will not detain me long. I must distinguish between

sameness and identity, or rather point out to what kinds of sameness

this latter word is commonly applied.

The word is often used quite loosely, but where the attempt is made

to distinguish between identity and sameness in a looser sense, and

to use terms with some precision, the former word serves to indicate

sameness in which there is no consciousness of duality, or in which

the consciousness of duality has fallen into the background and may

easily be overlooked. Sameness of the first kind, for example, is

spoken of as identity. This is the only kind of sameness in which there

is no element of duality at all. The use of the word identity is not,

however, restricted to this. Locke's inquiry concerning the identity of

masses of inorganic matter, of vegetables, of animals, and of persons,

has to do with sameness of the third kind on the list. In this kind

of sameness there is no clear consciousness that one is dealing with

more than one thing, and Locke's discussion is conducted throughout as

though one were not.

It may be objected that in certain other kinds there is often no clear

consciousness of duality, and yet one does not think of using the

term identity. This is quite true. The two kinds mentioned have been

thought worthy of special discussion by logician and philosopher, and

have been given a technical name. The others have not. Still, although

the word is not commonly used in such cases, it would, I fancy, seem

natural to use it in a direct ratio to the degree in which the sense

of duality falls into the background. Dr. Johnson would probably have

been willing to say that the stone he saw himself kick was identical

with the one the existence of which he wanted to prove. Bishop Berkeley

could have felt only disgust at such a use of the term. Scarcely

anyone, I suppose, would regard himself as speaking strictly if he

called the fourth kind of sameness identity. The co-existence of the

two things compared would prevent their being confounded. Without,

then, attempting to assign any very exact limits to the application of

a somewhat loosely used word, I may repeat my former statement that men

use the word identity to mark certain kinds of sameness in which there

is little or no consciousness of duality, and they are not inclined to

use it to mark samenesses in which things are recognized as similar but

clearly distinct.

With this I end the first part of my discussion, and I confess I draw

a long breath in doing so. When I sat down to write it was with the

impression that I could say all that was necessary about the kinds of

sameness in a much smaller number of pages; but finding it impossible

to avoid misunderstandings without being more explicit and detailed,

I have had to change my plan. Now, that I am through, I must confess

to myself that most persons will find this hair-splitting anything but

entertaining--which would be held by the inconsiderate to furnish a

presumption against the truth it contains, if ancient adages go for

anything. It should be remembered, however, that the old saw which puts

truth in a well does not indicate that the well may not be a dry one.

With this consolatory reflection I turn to the second part of my task.