THINGS DENOTED BY NAMES. 77 



two phenomena is sufficient to admit of its being said that 

 the two relations resemble ; provided, of course, the points of 

 resemblance are found in those portions of the two phenomena 

 respectively which are connoted by the relative names. 



While speaking of resemblance, it is necessary to take 

 notice of an ambiguity of language, against which scarcely 

 any one is sufficiently on his guard. Kesemblance, when it 

 exists in the highest degree of all, amounting to undis- 

 tinguishableness, is often called identity, and the two similar 

 things are said to be the same. I say often, not always; 

 for we do not say that two visible objects, two persons for 

 instance, are the same, because they are so much alike that 

 one might be mistaken for the other : but we constantly use 

 this mode of expression when speaking of feelings ; as when 

 I say that the sight of any object gives me the same sensation 

 or emotion to-day that it did yesterday, or the same which it 

 gives to some other person. This is evidently an incorrect 

 application of the word same; for the feeling which I had 

 yesterday is gone, never to return; what I have to-day is 

 another feeling, exactly like the former perhaps, but distinct 

 from it; and it is evident that two different persons cannot 

 be experiencing the same feeling, in the sense in which we 

 say that they are both sitting at the same table. By a 

 similar ambiguity we say, that two persons are ill of the 

 same disease ; that two persons hold the same office ; not in 

 the sense in which we say that they are engaged in the same 

 adventure, or sailing in the same ship, but in the sense that 

 they fill offices exactly similar, though, perhaps, in distant 

 places. Great confusion of ideas is often produced, and 

 many fallacies engendered, in otherwise enlightened under- 

 standings, by not being sufficiently alive to the fact (in itself 

 not always to be avoided), that they use the same name to 

 express ideas so different as those of identity and undis- 

 tinguishable resemblance. Among modern writers, Arch- 

 bishop Whately stands almost alone in having drawn atten- 

 tion to this distinction, and to the ambiguity connected 

 with it. 



Several relations, generally called by other names, are really 



