THINGS DENOTED BY NAMES. 93 



pair of objects concerned in a second phenomenon, 

 the slightest resemblance between the 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. Resem- 

 blance, when it exists in the highest degree of all, 

 amounting to undistinguishableness, 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 feel- 

 ings ; 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 yester- 

 day 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 

 people 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, 



