DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 629 



treat them as merely different, we are apt to discover how 

 much they are alike. Difference, commonly so called, is 

 thus betiveen species of a genus. And the faculty by which 

 we perceive the resemblance upon which the genus is based, 

 is just as ultimate and inexplicable a mental endowment as 

 that by which we perceive the differences upon which the 

 species depend. There is a shock of likeness when we pass 

 from one thing to another which in the first instance we 

 merely discriminate numerically, but, at the moment of 

 bringing our attention to bear, perceive to be similar to the 

 first ; just as there is a shock of difference when we pass be- 

 tween two dissimilars.* The objective extent of the like- 

 ness, just like that of the difference, determines the magni- 

 tude of the shock. The likeness may be so evanescent, or 

 the basis of it so habitual and little liable to be attended 

 to, that it will escape observation altogether. Where, how- 

 ever, we find it, there we make a genus of the things com- 

 pared ; and their discrepancies and incommensurabilities in 

 other respects can then figure as the differentice of so many 

 species. As ' thinkables ' or ' existents ' even the smoke of 

 a cigarette and the worth of a dollar-bill are comjDarable — 

 still more so as 'perishables,' or as ' enjoyables.' 



Much, then, of what I have said of difference in the 

 course of this chapter will apply, with a simple change of 

 language, to resemblance as well. We go through the 

 world, carrying on the two functions abreast, discovering 

 differences in the like, and likenesses in the difierent. To 

 abstract the ground of either difference or likeness (where 

 it is not ultimate) demands an analysis of the given objects 

 into their parts. So that all that was said of the depend- 

 ence of analysis upon a preliminary separate acquaintance 

 with the character to be abstracted, and upon its having 

 varied concomitants, finds a j)lace in the psychology of re- 

 semblance as well as in that of difference. 



But when all is said and done about the conditions 

 which favor our perception of resemblance and our ab- 

 straction of its ground, the crude fact remains, that some 



* Of. Sully : Mind, x. 494-5 ; Bradley: ibid. xi. 83 ; Bosauquet : ibid. xi. 

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