94 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



and many fallacies engendered, in otherwise enlight- 

 ened understandings, 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 undistinguishable resemblance. 

 Among modern writers, Archbishop Whately stands 

 almost alone in having drawn attention to this dis- 

 tinction, and to the ambiguity connected with it*. 



* " 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 undistinguish- 

 ably 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, appear- 

 ance, &c., as e. g., when we say ' this house is built of the same 

 stone with such another,' we only mean that the stones are undis- 

 tinguishable in their quaHties; 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 w r e say of any man, that he is greatly altered since 

 such a time, we understand, and, indeed, imply by the very expres- 

 sion, 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 identity 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, men, overlooking 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. . . . The Hindoos 

 of the present day, from observing the similar symptoms which are 

 known by the name of small-pox, and the communication of the 

 like from one patient to another, do not merely call it (as we do) 



