48 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



incorrect application of the word same ; for the feehng which I had 

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

 ing, exactly like the fomier 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 sa7}ie 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, 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 modem writers. Archbishop Whately stands almost alone in 

 having drawn attention to this distinction, and to the ambiguity con- 

 nected with it.* 



Several relations, generally called by other names, are really cases 

 of resemblance. As for example, equality ; which is but another word 

 for the exact resemblance commonly called identity, considered as 

 subsisting between things in respect of their quantity. And this ex- 

 ample foniis a suitable transition to the third and last of the three heads, 

 under Avhich, as already remarked. Attributes are commonly aiTanged. 



V. Quantity. 



§ 12. Let us imagine two things, between which there is no differ- 

 ence (that is, no dissimilarity), except in quantity alone : for instance, 

 a gallon of water, and more than a gallon of water. A gallon of water, 

 like any other external object, makes its presence known to us by a 

 set of sensations which it excites. Ten gallons of water are also an 

 external object, making its presence known to us in a similar manner ; 

 and as we do not mistake ten gallons of water for a gallon of water, 



* " Same (as well as ' One,' ' Identical,' and other words derived from them) is used fre- 

 quently 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, &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 undistinguishable in their qual- 

 ities; not that the one building was pulled down, and the other constructed with the ma- 

 terials. Whereas sameness, in the primary sense, does not even necessarily imply similar- 

 ity ; 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, accord- 

 ing to popular usage, of degrees. We speak of two things being tiearty the same, but 

 not entirely ; personal identity does not admit of degrees. Nothing, perhaps, has contribu- 

 ted more to the error of Realism than inattention to this ambiguity. WTien several persons 

 are said to have One and the Sa?7ie 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 Otie 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) one disease, but believe (if we 

 may credit the accounts given) that the small-pox is a goddess, who becomes incarnate in 

 each infected patient."— l*^^c ; Appendix on Ambiguous Terms, p. 298. My references to 

 this work are always to the first edition. 



