FALLACIES OF CONFUSION. 391 



observing also, that Same, in the secondary sense, admits, 

 according to popular usage, of degrees : we speak of two 

 things being nearly the same, but not entirely : personal 

 identity does not admit of degrees. Nothing, perhaps, has 

 contributed more to the error of Eealism than inattention to 

 this ambiguity. When several persons are said to have one 

 and the same opinion, thought, or idea, many men, overlook 

 ing the true simple statement of the case, which is, that they 

 are all thinking alike, look for something more abstruse and 

 mystical, and imagine there must be some One Thing, in the 

 primary sense, though not an individual, which is present at 

 once in the mind of each of these persons ; and thence readily 

 sprung Plato s theory of Ideas, each of which was, according 

 to him, one real, eternal object, existing entire and complete 

 in each of the individual objects that are known by one name.&quot; 

 It is, indeed, not a matter of inference but of authentic 

 history, that Plato s doctrine of Ideas, and the Aristotelian 

 doctrine (in this respect similar to the Platonic) of substantial 

 forms and second substances, grew up in the precise way here 

 pointed out ; from the supposed necessity of finding, in things 

 which were said to have the same nature, or the same qualities, 

 something which was the same in the very sense in which a 

 man is the same as himself. All the idle speculations respect 

 ing TO ov, TO tv, TO ofjLo iov, and similar abstractions, so 

 common in the ancient and in some modern schools of thought, 

 sprang from the same source. The Aristotelian logicians saw, 

 however, one case of the ambiguity, and provided against 

 it with their peculiar felicity in the invention of technical 

 language, when they distinguished things which diifered both 

 specie and numero, from those which diifered nume.ro tantum, 

 that is, which were exactly alike (in some particular respect 

 at least) but were distinct individuals. An extension of this 

 distinction to the two meanings of the word Same, namely, 

 things which are the same specie tantum, and a thing which 

 is the same numero as well as specie, would have prevented 

 the confusion which has been a source of so much darkness 

 and such an abundance of positive error in metaphysical 

 philosophy. 



