FALLACIES OF CONFUSION. 567 



times for what can not be prevented, at other times only for what we have 

 reason to be assured will not ; we shall have occasion hereafter to pursue 

 to some of its ulterior consequences. 



A most important ambio;uity, both in common and in metaphysical lan- 

 guage, is thus pointed out by Archbishop Whately in the Appendix to his 

 Logic : '■^Same (as well as One^ Identical, and other words derived from 

 them) is used frequently in a sense very different from its primary one, as 

 applicable to a single object; being employed to denote great similarity. 

 When several objects are undistinguishably alike, one single description will 

 apply equally to any of them ; and thence they are said to be all of one and 

 the same nature, appearance, etc. As, e. g., when we say ' this house is built 

 of the sarne stone with such another,' we only mean that the stones are 

 undistinguishable in their qualities; not that the one building was pulled 

 down, and the other constructed with the materials. Whereas sameness, 

 in the primary sense, does not even necessarily imply similarity ; for if we 

 say of any man that he is greatly altered, since such a time, we understand, 

 and indeed imply by the very expression, that he is one person, though 

 different in several qualities. It is worth 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 identi- 

 ty does not admit of degrees. Nothing, perhaps, has contributed more to the 

 error of Realism than inattention to this ambiguity. When several persons 

 are said to have one and the same opinion, thought, or idea, many men, over- 

 looking the true simple statement of the case, which is, that they are all 

 thinking alike, look for something more abstruse and mystical, and imag- 

 ine 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, ac- 

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

 each of the individual objects that are known by one name." 



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 sim- 

 ilar to the Platonic) of substantial forms and second substances, grew up 

 in the precise way here pointed out ; from the supposed necessity of find- 

 ing, in things which were said to have the same nature, or the same quali- 

 ties, something which was the same in the very sense in which a man is the 

 same as himself. All the idle speculations respecting to ov, to tV, to ofioiov, 

 and similar abstractions, so common in the ancient and in some modern 

 schools of thought, sprang from the same source. The Aristotelian logi- 

 cians 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 Avhich differed both specie and numero, from those 

 which differed numero 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. 



One of the most singular examples of the length to which a thinker of 

 eminence may be led away by an ambiguity of language, is afforded by this 

 very case. I refer to the famous argument by which Bishop Berkeley flat- 

 tered himself that he had forever put an end to " skepticism, atheism, and 



