138 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



Hence generalisation becomes a question of insight and 

 even of intuition. It is a question of knowing what ele- 

 ments form part of a concept and what do not, and the 

 attempt to form sound inductive canons is rendered 

 nugatory. At the same time the permanence and sub- 

 stantiality of the conceptual world is vindicated against 

 the world of sense, since the concept acquires the unchang- 

 ing character which the empirical world has lost. On the 

 other hand, the abstract conception of identity gives rise 

 to difficulties. For (a) the < manifestations ' of the concept 

 differ even in characteristic quality. The redness of the 

 rose is not the redness of the geranium, (b) The mani- 

 festation suffers change, the red of the rose deepens and 

 fades and (c) in the strictly conceptual order it is not the 

 rose that is red. The quality or characteristic identity of 

 the rose species is not the same character as redness, but 

 both more and less. With this puzzle predication itself 

 becomes impossible, and our ordinary ways of thought are 

 triumphantly dismissed as pertaining to the world of illu- 

 sion by some metaphysicians. Others with more insight 

 perceive without perhaps deserting the conceptual method 

 that it is our way of taking the concept that is at fault. 

 Identity is in fact a concept formed from and applicable to 

 objects that are in one way or another different. It implies 

 some difference, and is compatible alike with change, with 

 variety of aspect and specific differences of character. 

 Bare identity, identity exclusive of any difference, is an 

 abstraction within an abstraction. It is in fact a false 

 abstraction, to which nothing corresponds, and to endea- 

 vour to fit an experience or a thought into it is precisely 

 like trying to construct a curve which shall be convex 

 without being concave. Thus by the separation of the 

 concept of identity from the experience in which it arises 

 two distinct fallacies arise. One is the confusion of two 

 meanings of the term by concentrating on the point which 

 they have in common to the neglect of their essential 

 differences. The other is the formation of a wholly unreal 

 and impossible category to which thought and experience 

 are to be subjected, with the result that they are condemned 

 as illusory and full of contradictions. 



