On Sameness and Identity.PART I.THE KINDS OF SAMENESS.And some require everything accurately stated; whereas, this accuracy annoys others, either because of their inability to follow a train of reasoning through, or because of its hair-splitting character; for accuracy does involve some hair-splitting.Aristotle, Metaph. Book I, The Less, c. 3.Section 1.There are few words the ambiguity of which has led to more confusion and profitless dispute than that of the wordsame. Men constantly use this word as though it had but one meaning, and that meaning were always clear, whereas it really gives expression to a number of widely different experiences, some of which are quite difficult of analysis. It is highly desirable that these experiences should not be confounded with each other, but kept clearly separate, as the consequences of such misconception are very far-reaching. How far-reaching, I shall in the pages to follow try to indicate.It is my purpose to point out the differences in connotation of the several senses of this highly ambiguous word, to show the element which they have in common, and to trace some of the difficulties and absurdities which have sprung from using the word loosely and without proper discrimination. I shall have to plead guilty to something very like hair-splitting, but I may put forward in excuse the undeniable fact that "accuracy does involve some hair-splitting." If anyone prefers the self-contradictions and preposterous conclusions to which loose and unanalytic thought has so often led the unwary, he is welcome to them. I shall hold a few of these up to inspection after a while. For my part, I prefer a little quibbling at the outset of a discussionto a systematic incoherence all through it, with the chances of finding myself in acul-de-sacat the end. Whether I am successful in dissipating to some degree the fog which has hung about samenesses and obliterated important distinctions, each one must judge for himself.The kinds of sameness I find to be as follows:Sec. 2.I. We speak of any sensation, feeling, or idea, or complex of sensations, feelings, or ideas, as being the same with itself at any one instant. The pain in my finger is what it is at this moment. The finger itself (the immediate object of knowledge, a complex from sense and imagination) is, at each moment, what it is. It is to this sense of the word that the logical laws of Identity and Contradiction have ultimate reference.Sec. 3.II. A sensation, feeling, or idea, or complex of sensations, feelings, or ideas, considered in itself and without reference to the world of material things, is called the same with one previously existent when the two are alike. I say, for example, that I feel to-day the same pain I felt yesterday, or that I have dreamt the same dream three times. This is evidently not sameness of the kind first mentioned.Sec. 4.III. We speak of seeing the same material thing at different times. Suppose a man passing along a country road to look across a field at a distant tree. What he actually sees is a small bluish patch of color, which, interpreting in terms furnished by his previous experience, he supplements with material drawn from memory and imagination. On the following day he looks at the tree again from a nearer point and sees a larger green patch of color with distinct differences of shading and with a clear outline. This he interprets in a similar manner.Now, without being a philosopher at all, and without conscious reference to anything beyond what he has experienced or can experience, he affirms that he has on two successive days seenthe same tree. I ask, just what is the significance of the word same as used in this connection? What peculiar experience has it been employed to mark? What is perceived on the one occasion is not the same as what is perceived on the other in the sense of the word first given (by "perceived" I mean existing in consciousness as a complex of mental elements. With the supposed external correlates of our percepts I am not now concerned). And it is equally clear that two such percepts need not be the same in the second sense of the word, for they may be quite unlike. In this case they are unlike, so far at least as what is actually in sensation is concerned.What peculiar experience then does the word mark when the observer declares that he has seen the same tree twice?We are now in the sphere of material objects (i. e., as experienced; I refer to the mental content and nothing more), and are not concerned with our experiences as isolated elements, but as grouped and arranged in series. Our total possible experience of any one object is a collection of partly simultaneous and partly successive actual and possible sensations which condition each other, and which we regard as a unit. The Idealist believes that this is all there is of the object, and all we mean when we commonly employ the word. The Realist assumes that there is something beyond and corresponding to this experience, and which is to be regarded as the real thing. He, however, must admit that all we can know of any object, in whatever sense we choose to employ that word, all our evidence for maintaining its existence and determining its qualities, must be drawn from this group of sensations. It is this that we immediately know, and anything inferred must be inferred from this.From this it follows that when any one, whether Realist, or Idealist, or unreflective man, feels justified in asserting that what he perceives to-day is the same object he perceived yesterday, heis led to make this assertion on the strength of some distinction in his immediate experience, and he refers only secondarily, if at all, to anything beyond and external to this. The distinction which he marks by the word is this: He has reason to believe that the two percepts in question belong to the one series,—to the one life history, so to speak. He believes that had he cared to do so he could have filled up the gap between them by a continuous series of percepts, each conditioned by the preceding, and forming the one chain. Each represents to him the one object, in that each stands for the whole series, and his thought is much more taken up with the series as a whole than with the individuals composing it. He knows that the percepts in such a series can only be successive, never simultaneous. Had he reason to suspect that the two percepts we are discussing belong to different series of this kind, and that there is nothing in the nature of the case to prevent their being simultaneous, he would decide for two trees.But each percept contains more than one mental element, and just as we may regard each percept as representing the whole series, so we may regard each element as representing the whole complex which may be experienced at one time, and through this the whole series of percepts. I say that the orange I smell is the same with the one I see; that I can reveal by striking a light the chair I fell over in the dark; that I hear rattling down the street the coach I stepped out of a few moments ago. It is not worth while to distinguish this use from the use of the word same just mentioned, for they agree in making a single experience stand for a whole group or series, which is assumed to be at least potentially present with each one. When we have had two experiences thus representing the one group, we say that we have in two ways, or on two occasions, experienced the same object. In this sense has the man in our illustration seen yesterdayand to-day the same tree. In this sense could he at the one time see and touch the same tree.It is in this sense also that we use the word when we say that the object seen with the naked eye and the object seen through a telescope or under a microscope are the same. If I look at a distant object with the naked eye and then look at it through a telescope, what I actually see (or what is actually in the sense) is in the two cases very different. But just as seeing an object from a distance with the naked eye, I may walk towards it and substitute for the dim and vague percept which I first had a series of percepts increasing in clearness and ending in one which I regard as altogether satisfactory, so I may substitute at once this clear percept for the dim one, by the use of the telescope, and may know that it properly belongs to the series which, taken as a whole, constitutes my notion of the object. This I may know from the relations which this percept bears to the other percepts of the series, and which allow me to pass in my inferences from it to them as I can from any one of them to another. If, seeing a dim object upon the horizon, I raise a telescope and through it perceive the figure of a man, I know that I could have had a similar percept without any telescope by simply approaching the object. Conversely, on perceiving a man near at hand, I know I could have a similar percept from a distance by looking through a telescope. I call the man seen through the telescope the same as the man seen with the naked eye, for the same reason as I call the man seen by the eye at a distance the same with the man seen near at hand.And the apparently non-extended speck which I see with the naked eye looks very different from the curious insect I see when I place a microscope over this speck, but I call them the same for the reason just given. If the insect as seen under the glass be divided, so is the speck as seen by the eye; if the insect istaken away, the speck disappears too. The series of percepts made possible through the microscope may be regarded as a continuation of the series which arises from approaching the eye to the object. Each member in it stands in a relation to this primary series similar to that illustrated above in the case of the telescope, and similar to that held by the terms of the primary series to each other. It should be kept clearly in mind that in all these cases the object (immediately perceived) is the same only in the sense pointed out,i. e., two or more percepts, which may, in themselves considered, be quite unlike each other, are recognized as in a certain relation to each other, as each representing the one series to which all belong. If one thinks he has reason to believe each percept represents not merely the series of percepts, but something different, which he infers and is pleased to call the "real" thing, he may be inclined to believe that in saying he sees the same object on two occasions he is referring to this something. It must be clear to him, however that all his evidence for the sameness of this something lies in the experience I have described, and it is to this that he must point in proof that it is the same. The percepts themselves are certainly not the same in any other sense than the one given. They are not identical, and they need not be alike. They merely stand for each other. Should one forget this, he will fall into blunders which I will illustrate at length when I speak of the common opinion on the subject of the infinite divisibility of space.John Locke, in his famous "Essay,"[1]has made a distinction between the sameness of masses of inorganic matter and the sameness of organisms. That of the former, he says, consists in the sameness of their particles, while the sameness of a plant or animal does not consist in that of the particles which composeit at this time or at that, for they are in continual flux, but in the participation in the one life of the organism. It does not, however, appear to me that we have here a real difference in the kind of experience marked by the word. The difference is merely that in the one case we connect this experience, not with the object as a whole, but with the separate particles which compose it, which we take as so many separate objects each having a sameness of the kind just discussed, while in the other case we look upon the object as a whole, as a unit, and disregard any reference to its component parts. But whether we regard the object as a unit or take each of its ultimate parts as separate objects, we are thinking of the one kind of sameness. We are thinking of a certain life-history in which any one link may represent the whole, and any two links may be, from this point of view, regarded as equivalent. It is not merely with reference to plants and animals that we speak of sameness without regard to a sameness of constituent parts. We do it in this case simply because the organism furnishes us with a convenient unit, and one much more important as a unit than as an aggregate. We can make similar units when we please, and consider their sameness without thinking of their parts. We speak of the same nation as existing through many generations, and of the same corporation as surviving many deaths. Whether the object we are considering be naturally indivisible, or composite and assumed a unit for convenience, when we speak of it as the same at two different times we are referring to the one experience. Locke does make here a distinction worth noticing, but it does not mark two fundamentally different uses of the word.Sec. 5.IV. Two objects are called the same, and two other mental experiences occurring at the one time are called the same, from the fact that they are recognized as alike. The botanist, finding that two plants belong to the one class callsthem the same without any intention of confounding the two individuals. Nor does one who places his two hands in warm water and declares that he has the same feeling in both, confound the two streams of sensation. The fact that only likeness is meant is here clearly recognized. It is not, I think, as clearly recognized when similar sensations or other mental experiences (considered singly), occurring atdifferenttimes, are called the same. In that case they are sometimes spoken of as if they were material objects having a continuous sameness after the fashion explained above.Sec. 6.V. The word same is used to signify the relation between any mental experience and that which is regarded as its representative. This representative may or may not resemble it. We speak, for example, of calling up in memory this or that object seen at some past time. The memory-image is certainly not the same with the original percept in Sense I. When we say that the object of memory is the past, we cannot mean this, for it is plainly false. Nor is it thought of as merely like it, as in Sense II. It is thought of as a something which represents it—stands for it in a peculiar way. Just what this implies I will not here attempt to discover. It is enough for my purpose to point out that when we say a man remembers an object we do not mean merely to indicate the presence in his imagination of a resembling picture, but to include a certain relation between this picture and an original percept.It is not easy to describe what is present in an act of memory. When I am thinking of another man as calling to mind something from his past experience, I bring before my own mind two pictures, one representing his original percept, and one his present memory-image. Holding these before me together, I recognize them as related, but distinct. I use the word same to denote their relation. But the person who is exercising hismemory does not have before his mind two objects, an original and a copy, with an observed relation between them. He has not the original, or it would not be an act of memory. When, however, he reflects upon his experience as I have done, he represents it to himself as I have represented it to myself. He speaks as if, in the act of remembering, he were conscious of two objects and could compare them. He speaks of recognizing the memory picture as a copy and representative of the original percept. Language, as commonly used, adapts itself to this way of regarding the matter, and I may leave a further analysis of it to the student of the memory, merely pointing out that, whatever is implied in the experience, a common use of the word same is to denote this relation between any mental experience and the memory-image which represents it.It will be seen that this kind of sameness may be presupposed in affirming sameness in other senses of the word. When I compare a present sensation with one felt some days since, and affirm that they are the same, the latter must enter into the comparison through its representative in memory. It is not itself present at the time of the comparison.And when I say that I have seen the same tree yesterday and to-day, I mean, as I have explained, that the two percepts belong to the one series; but since my experience of yesterday cannot be itself present in my consciousness to-day, it can take its place in the series, as thought to-day, only by proxy. When I say that I have in my mind the same series on two successive days, I evidently mean that it is the same series in the sense in which any experience and its representative in memory are the same.Other less important instances might be given of this use of the word same to express the relation between any experience and its representative. We say that we see an object in amirror, when we mean that we see its reflected image. We speak of seeing in a picture this man or that. When we have found for anything a satisfactory substitute we say it is the same thing. Such uses of the word are not likely to deceive anyone, and I will not dwell upon them. Their meaning is too plain to be mistaken.Sec. 7.VI. We constantly speak of two men as seeing the same thing. In this we have a sense of the word which demands careful analysis. For the sake of clearness, and to avoid ambiguity, I will confine myself here, as I have done in the foregoing sections, to an examination of what is actually experienced by the men, and will defer all consideration of existences assumed as lying beyond a possible experience in an extra-mental world, for discussion in sections to follow.The question which interests me at present is simply this: What experience is it that leads a man to affirm that he and someone else are perceiving the same object? The Realist (in the modern sense) would say that this experience is only his evidence that he and another are perceiving the same object, meaning by object what I have referred to as believed to lie beyond his experience; while the Idealist would say that this experience exhausts the whole matter. The Realist must, however, admit, as I have brought out in a different connection, that all his evidence for the existence of the object (in his sense), and for any affirmations whatever regarding it, lying within the field of the immediately known, any words, which have been coined to express qualities of, or distinctions concerning, this object, would retain a use and significance as marking distinctions within this field even if the object were supposed non-existent. Whether any such duplicate of what is immediately perceived exists or not is a question apart. Since we admittedly draw all our distinctions from the field of the immediatelyknown and then carry them over to such objects, and notvice versa, we may be sure that we would go on saying that two men see the same object in any case. I myself give the preference to that the existence of which is an indubitable fact, and prefer using the wordobjectto indicate the complex in consciousness. I have, however, no desire to assume any point in dispute by juggling with a word, and will try to keep clearly in mind the meaning of the word thus assumed whenever I use it.Now, the experience which leads me to say that I and another man see the same object is just this: I perceive a particular object, and in a certain relation to it I perceive the body of another man. From a past experience of my own body in relation to objects and from reasoning by analogy, I have come to connect such a relation of another body to the object with the thought of another consciousness of the object as connected with that body. Just as I perceive my own body to perform certain actions when I am conscious of perceiving the object, so I perceive this other body with which I have connected in thought a consciousness of the object to perform similar acts in response to similar relations towards the object. It is wholly a matter of observation in my own case that the perception of my own body in this or that relation to an object is asine qua nonto the perception of the object. And it is wholly a matter of reasoning from like to like that leads me to connect in thought sensations or percepts with any other animal body whatever. When I say, therefore, that I and another man are perceiving the same thing, there is in my mind a complex consisting of a percept or idea of the thing, a percept or idea of the man's body, and the thought of a percept connected with this body. When I say that he is thinking of us both as seeing the same thing, I call up in mind a similar complex and connect it in thought with his body. Whatever I may believe as to the existence or non-existenceof things lying beyond this sphere, and supposed to cause these experiences, these are the experiences to which I ultimately refer when I speak of two men as seeing the same object, and these furnish the whole ground for the existence of the phrase.The percept of the object which I connect in thought with the other man's body need not be wholly similar to my percept of the object. The man who has discovered that he is color-blind, does not suppose that men not similarly afflicted see just what he does in looking at a cherry tree full of ripe fruit. Nevertheless, he still speaks of himself and others as seeing the same objects. If another man's body is not exactly like mine, I am not justified by argument from similarity in reading into it an exactly similar experience. It is not the similarity of the two percepts that I am thinking of chiefly when I speak of them as percepts of the same object. I am thinking of the relation in which I suppose them to stand to each other. I think of the possible existence of the one under given circumstances as conditioning the possible existence of the other.Sec. 8.VII. When a man in an early stage of reflection upon his experience has decided that objects immediately perceived are not the real things but merely their mental copies or representatives, he may think of these "real" things in several ways. He may believe in a world of "real" things, consisting of groups of "real" qualities, external to consciousness; he may accept such "real" things, but add to them a substratum or substance, distinct from the qualities; or he may believe that the "real" exists as mere substratum, substance, or noumenon, and that all qualities, being merely its revelation to mind, exist within the circle of consciousness alone. The first position is one not often taken. The second is that held by Locke,[2]who believedthat, corresponding to our ideas of objects, there exist substances possessed of certain primary qualities, and having an underlying substance or substratum. The third represents the view of the Kantian,[3]who, to be consistent, must deny to his noumenon any qualities whatever. How he is to do this without having it lapse into utter nothingness is a problem for him to solve.The disciple of Locke has, therefore, in discussing all the uses of the word same, to consider the sameness of:1. Things immediately known.2. Groups of "real" qualities in an extra-mental world, more or less like what is immediately known.3. Substance; the "I know not what" to which Locke clung through all difficulties.The man who holds the first of the three views above mentioned need only consider the first and the second of these; and the Kantian need only consider the first and the third, rebaptizing the latter "noumenon" or "thing-in-itself."Omitting for later consideration the sameness of the self or ego, I have already discussed the uses of the word same within the field of the immediately known. It remains to consider the sameness of what is believed to lie beyond this, and to belong to a different kind of a world.When men discuss these supposed realities, in what senses of the word same may they reasonably think of them as the same?When a common, unreflective man, whose mind has not been, in the words of Bishop Berkeley, "debauched by learning," looks at a tree and thinks about it, he believes he sees a real tree, at a certain real distance from his body, and of a given real height and figure. It does not occur to him to make any distinction between the tree immediately perceived, and an inferred second tree, not immediately perceived, but represented by the former. There is the tree; he sees it; he can touch it; it seems to him but one: and he always talks as if there were but one tree to be discussed in the premises. That one tree, he thinks, is really extended; is really out in space beyond his body; is, in short, what it appears to be. To his unreflective mind this tree does not seem to be a representative or to be seen through a representative, but to be seen immediately and just where it really is.But when a man has begun to battle with the difficulties of reflection, and has learned to make a distinction between things and his ideas of the things, he will probably fall into unforeseen perplexities about this tree. He reflects that, when he closes his eyes, the tree disappears; that when he approaches it it looks green, and when he recedes from it it grows blue; that a man with a peculiar defect in his vision does not see it colored as he does; that when he makes a pressure on the side of one eyeball he sees two trees where before he saw only one; that when he makes such a pressure upon both eyeballs and moves them about a little he sees two trees moving about, although he knows real trees can not ordinarily be made to move about so easily. Such reflections lead him to distinguish between the tree as he sees it, and the tree as it really is, and he defines the tree as he sees it as the tree immediately known, and the real tree as the tree mediately known, a cause of the existence of the former. He now thinks that he sees directly only copies or representativesof real things, and as he believes these copies or representatives to be in his mind, and usually talks as if his mind were in his head, or at least in his body, he concludes that things immediately known must in many instances be much smaller than they seem, or perhaps lack extension altogether. How can a tree thirty feet high be in a man's mind? It is true, that, when I press upon my eyeballs in the manner described, I seem to see two trees of that size moving; but must it not be a mistake? Must we not assume that what is immediately seen onlyseemsextended, and stands for an extended thing which is grasped through it? So our philosopher learns to distrust the immediate object of knowledge; to regard it as in some sense unreal as compared with what it represents; and to deny to it those properties which it apparently possesses. It is not extended, but it stands for extension; it is not colored, but it stands for color; it is not real, but it stands for reality.It is natural, however, for one who has gone thus far to go farther. When he reflects again upon the fact that he sees the tree of a different color at different distances; when he remembers that colors vary with the quality of the light by which they are seen; when he and his neighbor dispute concerning the true color of the one tree which he sees dotted with red leaves, and which his opponent claims to see of a uniform color; then he may well begin to ask himself what is the true color of the "real" tree, or whether it is certain that it has any color at all? May not, then, the "real" tree have only some of the qualities that we ordinarily attribute to trees? Perhaps, the space qualities?Or, worse yet, since some of the qualities that the ordinary man attributes to trees may be regarded as existing only in a shadowy way in our ideas, why may not the same be true of all the other qualities? How do we know that "real" trees are extended? How do we know that "real" extension must beassumed as the cause of the delusive apparent extension of our ideas, if it is true that "real" color need not thus be assumed as a cause of our sensations of color? What if the "real" thing exists only as an indescribable and incomprehensible somewhat, which we must assume as a cause of the immediately known, but of which we can know nothing more? When one has once begun this slippery descent, it is not easy to say where he may find a peg to stay him in his course.Suppose, however, he is content to strip the "real" thing of what are commonly called the secondary qualities of matter, and to leave to it what are known as the primary. He will follow the example of the wholly unreflective man and speak of it in such a way as to suggest that the thing itself is something apart from its "real" qualities. A tree, he will say,hasqualities. It would certainly sound odd to hear him say itisqualities. And he will very possibly go on to justify the use of the language he employs by distinguishing between the "real" qualities represented by his mental picture of the tree and an obscure something which he assumes as underlying them; thus embracing the Lockian distinction of ideas, "real" qualities, and substance. He may conclude, it is true, that substance in this sense of the word is chimerical, and that the belief in it arises out of a misunderstanding of the significance of language; but if he has gone so far as to assume duplicates of things immediately known, in the form of "real" qualities, it is more probable that he will be inclined to complete his classes of beings by adding the third.[4]Now, it does not concern me to consider whether this change of view is to be regarded as a real progress in reflective knowledge or as a progressive decline and fall of the unreflective man.The point which concerns me is this: The unreflective man talks as if but one tree were under discussion. The man who reflects uses the same forms of speech: and even when he believes that he must distinguish between the tree immediately known and the obscure something which he has come to look upon as its cause, or between the tree immediately known, the bundle of "real" qualities inferred, and the obscure something that he connects with these, he still goes on talking as if he had only one thing to talk about. The danger of such a proceeding is obvious. If I talk about two or three things as though they were one, it is but natural that I should sometimes confuse them with each other. Should proof be forthcoming for one of these, it would be but natural for me to fall occasionally into the error of supposing that it somehow applies to the others. If I go on saying "the tree" when I mean one tree and something else, two trees, or two trees and something else, it is only to be expected that I sooner or later come to grief in my reasonings.And it should be noted that this peculiar ambiguity in the names of things entails a parallel ambiguity in the use of the words by which we indicate the mind's recognition of the presence of things. We commonly speak of a drunken man'sseeingtwo trees, where a sober man sees one. We speak of an insane man ashearingvoices, when no one has spoken. We say that weseethe maples are turning red, even when we believe that color may not properly be attributed to the mediate object of knowledge. On the other hand, those who hold to the existence of "real" objects of the kind before mentioned, generally maintain that in referring to things in space, their positions and mutual relations, we are giving attention, not to the immediately known, but to its "external" double. "I see, feel, perceive," it is "said, not the image, and not the constituents of the image (the ideas), but the external object bymeansof the image."[5]If one holds that this "external" object presupposes a substance, a something distinct from a group of qualities, there is nothing to prevent his maintaining, should he wish to do so, that in saying "I see a tree," primary reference is had to this substance or "reality." Of course, if, in the sentence "I see a tree," the word "tree" can have three meanings, it follows that there is also a possibility of taking in three senses the word "see." It is hardly necessary to point out that, unless one is very careful, "seeing" in one sense may result in "believing" in another, as "kicking" did in the famous case of Dr. Johnson and the stone. The caution is pertinent with respect to any other word used in the same general way as we use the word "see."I have said that when a man abandons his original unreflective position and learns to distinguish between things immediately known and other things they are supposed to represent, he goes on using the common language, and talking as though there were but one thing under consideration. Now, men do not do this merely in common conversation and in writing about matters of everyday life, but they do it in the very books that have been written to prove that each thing is thus double or triple. John Locke, for example, begins the very chapter in which he is about to draw the distinction between the secondary and primary qualities of bodies (i. e., between the constituents of things immediately known and the constituents of their "external" correlates), as well as to enlighten us on our ideas of substances, with the following words:[6]"The mind being, as I have declared, furnished with a great number of the simple ideas, conveyed in by the senses, as they are found in exterior things, or by reflexion on its own operations, takes notice also, that a certain number of these simple ideas go constantly together; which, being presumed to belongto one thing, and words being suited to common apprehensions, and made use of for quick despatch, are called, so united in one subject, by one name; which, by inadvertency, we are apt afterward to talk of, and consider as one simple idea, which indeed is a complication of many ideas together: because, as I have said, not imagining how these simple ideas can subsist by themselves, we accustom ourselves to suppose somesubstratumwherein they do subsist, and from which they do result, and which therefore we callsubstance."It is clear enough from this, as it is clear enough from other passages in the same book, that Locke talked as though the complex of simple ideas in consciousness were the very same thing (in Sense I) as the group of "real" qualities outside of consciousness. And no careful reader of his book can avoid seeing that the confusion of his language is a fair index to the confusion of his thoughts with regard to the two.[7]It is little better in the case of "bodies" and substance. In the passage just given, he would seem to makesubstancean obscure something underlying groups of ideas, and not groups of real qualities, but in the next sentence he makes it a substratum of the qualities which produce in us ideas. In many passages[8]he distinguishes betweensubstanceandsubstances, by which latter he means groups of "real" qualities with the added substratum or substance; as such substances he instances oak, elephant, iron. He emphasizes the fact that substance is not to be confounded with substances, which are things of different sorts.[9]In so far as the substances are bundles of qualities, they are known to us through sensation.[10]In so far as they are also substance, they cannot be known to us through sensation, for the idea of substance is not knownthrough sensation.[11]We are not then to look upon substance as such a constituent part of "a substance" as a quality is. The two belong to different classes. And if we offer proof for the existence of "real" substances, which is evidently applicable to them only as bundles of qualities—proof from sensation—then substance is overlooked altogether. It is significant that Locke, having thus put together under one head as "a substance" an oak viewed as a bundle of "real" qualities and an oak viewed as substratum, proceeded to argue as if he had but one thing to prove when he felt called upon to defend the real existence of substances. In his chapters on "The Extent of Human Knowledge," the "Reality of Knowledge," and "Our Knowledge of the Existence of Other Things,"[12]he devotes himself wholly to proving things as bundles of qualities, and pays no more attention to substance than if it had never entered his thought. If we take these chapters as authoritative, we must banish substance from the sphere of knowledge altogether.As another instance of a use of language calculated to produce confusion, I may offer the following from Sir William Hamilton: "Whatever we know is not known as it is, but only as it seems to us to be,"[13]—a use of words which would certainly indicate that the immediate and mediate objects of knowledge are one. And what would we infer from such a sentence as this: "Thus the consciousness of an Inscrutable Power manifested to us through all phenomena, has been growing ever clearer; and must eventually be freed from its imperfections. The certainty that on the one hand such a Power exists, while on the other hand its nature transcends intuition and is beyond imagination, is the certainty towards which intelligence has from the first been progressing."[14]Or this: "We are obliged to regard every phenomenon as a manifestation of some Power by which we are acted upon; though Omnipresence is unthinkable, yet, as experience discloses no bounds to the diffusion of phenomena, we are unable to think of limits to the presence of this Power; while the criticisms of Science teach us that this Power is Incomprehensible. And this consciousness of an Incomprehensible Power, called Omnipresent from inability to assign its limits, is just that consciousness on which Religion dwells."[15]"After concluding that we cannot know the ultimate nature of that which is manifested to us, there arise the questions—What is it that we know? In what sense do we know it?"[16]Or what shall one say to this: "Our consciousness of the unconditioned being literally the unconditioned consciousness, or raw material of thought, to which in thinking we give definite forms, it follows that an ever-present sense of real existence is the very basis of our intelligence."[17]Now, if the consciousness of an "inscrutable power" is not the "inscrutable power" itself; if the existence of such a "power" does not mean simply its existence in consciousness; if the phenomena in which, it is assumed, a "power" is manifested, are to be kept separate in thought from the "power," so that we shall be in no danger of confounding a consciousness of certain phenomena with consciousness of an "incomprehensible power;" if our "consciousness of the unconditioned" is to be kept in mind as signifying merely our "unconditioned consciousness," and an "ever-present sense of real existence" as signifying only an ever-present sense of "raw material" in consciousness; then it is high time that these sentences and all such as these be re-writtenwith some regard for lucidity, accuracy and consistency. How can a reader help confounding things when he is thus taught by the very man whose business it is to distinguish between them? The blind led by the blind is a cheerful spectacle compared with this.Nothing can be more evident than that the man who has abandoned his original unreflective belief in the singleness of the perceived object, and has come to believe in it as having one or more "external" correlates, should keep distinctly in mind that an immediate and a mediate object are, by hypothesis, two distinct things: that he has never had any direct experience whatever save of the one; and that all distinctions that he makes with regard to the other, the very notions of its existence, reality, and externality, have been drawn from the sphere of the immediate and carried over to it in thought. And he should never allow himself to forget, that, when he says he has passed in thought from the immediate to the mediate object, he cannot mean literally that his thought is now occupied directly upon this "external" thing—that it is itself present to mind. He should remember that he can only mean that he has such an experience as the following:He has in mind the immediate object, and a mental picture of a duplicate of this standing in a causal relation to it and represented by it; or, he has (if a Lockian), in addition to these two, a third highly vague and indefinite mental image (the idea of "substance"), which he connects with the image just described, as he has connected that with the immediate object; or (if a Kantian), he has in mind the immediate object, and, connected directly with that, such a vague image as has just been described. This is what he actually has in mind so far asobjectsare concerned. He does not, however, merely recognize the existence in his mind of these different images in their relations to each other, buthe looks upon this mental arrangement as somehow justified by experience and embodying truth.When we ask what the word "justified" can mean in this connection, it is not easy to find an answer. Within the sphere of the immediately known the meaning of the word is plain enough. When I have constructed in my imagination a certain image or complex of images embodying a belief as to matter of fact, I say the mental operation is justified when I can substitute for the idea the percept which it is supposed to represent, or can know indirectly that this might be done according to known laws of the appearance and disappearance of percepts. Thus I perceive the outside of a tree-trunk and form an idea of what lies under the bark. I have reason to know that by stripping off the bark I can substitute for the image I have formed the corresponding percept. And if I see at a distance a similar tree growing upon an inaccessible cliff, and form an image of what lies under its bark, I may still regard this as justified by the possibility of referring to cases in which a similar image, arising out of a similar experience, has been found to be justified. It is a legitimate inference that, if circumstances were somewhat different, the proper percept might take the place of this image too. It is evident, however, that the word "justified" cannot be used in this or any analogous sense in speaking of the relation not of an image to a percept, but of an image or a percept to a something that, by hypothesis, cannot itself enter into experience at all. What then can the word mean? It at first interests us to know that "some Snarks are Boojums," but our interest lapses when we discover that we have absolutely no mark by which we may know a Boojum from anything else.But I must not be drawn into digressions. The points with which I am concerned are these:—First: When a man says he sees this tree or that house, he ordinarily speaks as if there werebut the one object in his thought. If he distinguishes at all between an immediate and a mediate object, the language that he uses would not indicate that he does so. And even after men have entered into lengthy arguments for the purpose of marking this distinction, and insisting that things are not single as they seem to the unreflective, they still indulge in this peculiar use of language, which would imply either that they have forgotten for the time being their own distinction between the immediate and the mediate, or that they regard the two as the same in Sense I, and to be treated as one. Certainly, in their reasonings upon this subject, men who hold to the two kinds of objects do confound them with one another, and strengthen their faith in the two by this misconception, as I shall show later. We have here, then, what we may call a kind of sameness, or pseudo-sameness, which deserves investigation, and which one should be careful not to confound with sameness of other kinds. Whether the word same is commonly applied in the premises is indifferent to my purpose. In the remainder of the present section I will consider the relation between the mental representative and its assumed correlatives.Second: If we are to accept not merely the world of objects immediately known, but also a world or two worlds corresponding to this, and yet distinct from it, we cannot be sure our list of samenesses is complete unless we traverse in our search for the different kinds all the spheres of being in which we believe, and of which we think we can have some knowledge. In the section following this one I will try to discover the kinds of sameness which a believer in "external" things may reasonably attribute to them within their own sphere. In this there is no question of the relation of something in one sphere to a correlative something in another.For the first point. What is in a man's mind when he is thinking of his percept as having a "real" object corresponding to it,I have shown to be as follows: He has in mind an immediate object and a duplicate of this, not necessarily altogether like it, imagined as standing in a causal relation to it and represented by it. When it occurs to him that this imagined duplicate is itself an immediate object and not the "real" one, he does as much for it, and provides it with a similar duplicate. In every case, when he tries to think of an object immediately perceived as having a "real" correlate, he simply furnishes it with an imaginary double in this way. What else is he to do? He is trying to think of two objects; the "real" object cannot, it is said, be in the mind; he must then imagine it. If he is a Lockian he will have in mind the immediate object and two imaginary ones, one signifying the "real" object as a bundle of qualities, and the other, a highly vague one, picturing the "substance."Now, since this is all that can be before the man's mind, any kind of sameness which concerns the percept and the "real" thingmust mean to him some relation between the immediate object and the image or images of which I have spoken. When this is realized it is seen that we have here not a new kind of sameness, a distinct experience, but a kind already discussed. The relation between the immediate object and the images described is simply that between representative and thing represented. This I have already examined within the field of what is recognized as immediately known. Here, too, it would seem that we are in the field of the immediately known, since we have to do with percepts and ideas, but though these images are in this field, they are here, so to speak, under protest, and their framing is supposed to be justified[18]only by something assumed to be not in this field. When this something is thought of at all it is thought of in just the way I have described. This is what thinking it means. Nevertheless, this duplicate world is assumed tobe a world apart, and for this reason I have considered the sameness of percepts and their corresponding "real" objects by itself. It gives us sameness in sense seventh.In writing the foregoing I have had in mind chiefly the position of the Lockian. I need not consider at length that taken by the Kantian, for what I have said will, with little change, apply to it also. If I hold to a "noumenon" as corresponding to my "phenomenon," and yet deny to it all qualities whatsoever, I must, to retain any appearance of consistency, represent it in my mind in the very vaguest possible way. Nevertheless, I must represent it, or I am not thinking of it at all, and I must relate the phenomenon and this vague representation in the way described. A true consistency would, of course, make impossible the whole process, for it would make impossible the giving of any quality at all to the representation, and the putting any relation between it and the phenomenon. In so dark a night cats do not merely turn grey, they disappear. On the other hand, if one is too liberal with this "noumenon," it palpably ceases to be a "noumenon," and degenerates into something very like a "phenomenon." The illusion must not be lost. Both these conflicting tendencies may be well illustrated in Mr. Spencer's "Unknowable." If we really refuse to allow to the consciousness of it "any qualitative or quantitative expression whatever,"[19]our vague image wholly disappears and there is nothing left in our consciousness but the "phenomenon." While if we follow the "First Principles" in coaxing it back into existence by allowing it reality,[20]and causality,[21]and a freedom from limits,[22]and printing its name with a capital letter,[23]as though it were even better than other things—if we do all this there is danger of the convalescent's becoming toorobust altogether. The problem has its parallel in the practical problem of paying wages:—one must not pay too little, or he loses his laborer; nor too much, or he loses his money. The thing is to find the happy mean which will keep an object of thought before a man's mind and yet not make him lose all appearance of consistency.But in which ever of the ways mentioned a man thinks of "real" things, he does what I have described. And when he implies that the immediately known and the "real" are in some sense the same, as he does when he talks as if there were but the one object, or asserts that we do not know things as they are in themselves but only as they appear to us; he really uses the word same in the fifth sense that I have given. The fact that he is using it to indicate the relation between percepts and a certain class of ideas which he has come to regard as duplicates of his percepts does not make the use of the word a new one. Whatever may be the state of affairs outside of his consciousness, this is all that takes place within it; and the word same, used in this connection, can mean no more to him than I have said.Sec. 9.To avoid needless prolixity I will class together and very briefly treat of the kinds of sameness which one may attribute to "external" things. It is not necessary to go at length into the discussion of these, for since the "external" world, as it is assumed by those who have faith in it, is, to the man thinking it, simply a more or less modified duplicate of the world of things immediately perceived; and since all ground for attributing to it any determinations at all must be found in that which is immediately perceived; we may naturally look to find in it nothing that we have not already found in this immediate world. How, indeed, could anything else get into it? We cannot haveinmind what is by hypothesisoutof mind. The "real" world is then, in the mind of the man who thinks it, a world ofimagined objects, and the world of imagination depends for its material upon the world of sense. A little reflection will show that the kinds of sameness of these "realities" are only the kinds of sameness already discussed duplicated, and assumed to belong to a new world.1. An "external" quality or group of qualities may be said to be thesamewith itself at any one instant. Here we have Sense I carried over into the field of imagined duplicates.2. An "external" quality existing at one time may be said to be thesamewith an "external" quality existing at another time, to indicate that the two are similar. The same thing may be true of any group of qualities. Here we have Sense II.3. The "external" bundle of qualities, which formed for Locke the knowable element in a thing or "body," may be regarded as being thesameat two different times—as having, so to speak, a life-history. Here one is simply calling up in thought the experience described under Sense III.4. Two "external" things (bundles of "real" qualities), or two "external" qualities, existing at one time, may be called thesameto mark similarity. Here we have Sense IV.5. An "external" thing (in the sense just indicated), or an "external" quality, may be called thesamewith its representative. If this representative be the immediate object of knowledge, we have the experience described as Sense VII. If it be another "external" thing or quality,e. g., an "external" picture in an "external" mirror, an "external" statue in "external" marble, etc., we have Sense V.6. Two men may be said to perceive thesame"external" thing. In saying this one simply calls up in mind the complex described at length under VI, but makes the duplicate, which is, to him, the thing, stand in the complex in the place of the percept, this being now regarded as a mere representative.7. An "external" thing may be said to be thesamewith its representative in consciousness or with the substance or noumenon assumed to underlie it. Here we have Sense VII.It would seem scarcely necessary to mention this last, since, if the representative in consciousness can be called the same with its "real" correlate, it would seem self-evident that the "real" correlate may be called the same with it. I add it, however, for the sake of completeness. It should be noted that in this last kind of sameness we step over the limits of any one class of being, ideas, things (as bundles of qualities), or substance. The word is used to denote a relation between something in one class and a corresponding thing in another class.In the foregoing I have been considering the sameness of "real" or "external" things regarded as bundles of qualities. If one ask concerning the sameness of Locke's "substance," or the "noumenon" of other writers, I would say that our notions of this must vary with the kind of being we allow this nebulous entity. Strict consistency in dealing with a noumenon as sometimes defined means, of course, its utter collapse. If, however, we keep anything in mind at all, we must carry over to it at least the first of the kinds of sameness described. I do not think it would be hard to show that several other kinds are carried over in despite of consistency by men who hold to this shadowy something under one name or another.As, however, we do not find here any new sense of the word same, but mere repetition in a new field (if one may call it such), it seems unnecessary to dwell upon this part of my subject.I have not discussed at all the sameness of things from the point of view of an adherent of that Natural Realism which claims that we know immediately real things and yet holds that real things are not our perceptions themselves, but something extra-mental. This view is so incoherent that it is not likely tobe taken seriously by men who have learned to reflect at all. I may say, however,en passant, that it does not add to the kinds of sameness I have described: it merely confounds them one with another, and falls into the inconsequences which naturally result from so doing.Sec. 10.When we come to the question of the sameness of the Self or Ego we are, if possible, on more debatable ground than heretofore. The whole subject of our knowledge of the Self lies as yet, in the opinion of many, very much in the dark. Without undertaking the task of defining narrowly what this elusive something is, it would seem that I may safely make concerning it at least the following assertions:In using the word self, we may have reference either to what is immediately known as appearing in the circle of consciousness, the phenomenon, or to a something supposed to lie beyond this sphere and to be known only through its representative in consciousness.Now this something beyond may be looked at in various ways. John Locke, in discussing the not-self, made the three-fold division of idea, bundle of "real" qualities, and substance. He might with equal reason have distinguished in a similar way between the self as idea (the immediately known), the self as a bundle of "real" qualities (not immediately known), and the self as substance. As a matter of fact, however, he did not put the not-self and the self upon the same plane. He seemed to think that we know the self more immediately, and to hold that it enters consciousness as the bundle of "real" qualities[24]which, in the case of matter, is assumed to lie beyond. The "substance" of the self, however, he condemns to outer darkness and the company of material substance. To me there seems no reason, admitting the right to pass at all beyond the immediately perceived,for making the distinction which he does make. And as one, who has followed him with assent in his treatment of the not-self, may, with some justice complain of his inconsistency and refuse to follow him here, I mention the position he might have taken as well as the position he actually did take with respect to the self and its existences.Sec. 11.The word self may then be regarded as referring either:1. To the self as phenomenon, a something immediately perceived, a part or the whole of our conscious experience;2. To a complex of "real" qualities beyond and represented by the self as it appears in consciousness;3. To the substance of self, or self as noumenon, a vague and ill-defined something, supposed to be distinct from and to underlie phenomena or "real" qualities; or4. To two, or to all, of these taken together.If the word is used in the last of these senses any inquiry concerning sameness must split up its complex meaning and treat separately the different elements included. It remains, then, to inquire what kinds of sameness we may attribute to the self in the first three senses given. I will take them in reverse order.Sec. 12.With respect to the third sense, which makes it refer to the "substance" of Locke or the "noumenon" of other writers: all the difficulties which arise out of the endeavor to attribute sameness of any kind to any substance or noumenon obtain here also. But it seems on the surface more glaringly inconsistent in the adherent of noumena to discriminate between different kinds as admitting of differences of treatment than it does for him to suppose them capable of treatment at all. Things that differ cannot be conceived as differing except in qualities, and here there is question not of qualities but of noumena. If one is to retain any appearance of consistency, hemust not maintain that the word same is applicable in any given sense to certain noumena and not to others. If he does so, he openly abandons his noumena to a phenomenal fate. And, as a matter of fact, I think it is plain that those believers in noumena, who distinguish them from one another, yet think of them in just the one way. If we take the utterances of a good representative of the class, Sir William Hamilton, we may see that although he distinguishes between the noumenal ego and the noumenal non-ego, not only do his clearest statements make such a distinction out of the question, but the distinction drawn is so vague and insignificant[25]that the two noumena may be thought of and reasoned about in the one way. Phenomena being abstracted, what was in his mind when he spoke of the one was probably in no respect different from what was in his mind when he spoke of the other. In so far, then, as the noumena themselves are concerned, it would seem that any kind of sameness which we may predicate of the noumenal not-self we may predicate on the same ground and with equal justice of the noumenal self, andvice versa. If, however, any sense of the word same marks a relation between a noumenon and some other thing or things, and if the two noumena differ as respects this relation, then this kind of sameness may be attributed to the one and not to the other. It may be claimed that we indicate just such a relation in using the word same in Sense VI; and that, whatever one might do, one would under no circumstances speak of two men as perceiving the same self, noumenal or any other. I shall discuss this point when I come to discuss the sameness of self as phenomenon.I may add here that when one obliterates the distinction between noumena by plunging them into the darkness of the "unknowable," there can, of course, be no question of a new senseof the word same in the field I am discussing. On the general question of noumenal sameness, all that it seems to me necessary to say I have said before.Sec. 13.The second sense of the word self would make it a complex of "real" qualities beyond, and represented by, the self as it appears in consciousness. Now, I do not think that the fact that one would attribute to the self, so considered, one class of qualities, and to the not-self another class, would, when the two "real" objects are considered in themselves, prevent one's ascribing to the former all the kinds of sameness which one may ascribe to the latter, or would justify the assumption of a new kind of sameness proper only to the former. In discussing the sameness of "external" things I have not made any one kind of it dependent upon the peculiar quality of their qualities, if I may so speak. I considered them only as groups of qualities in general, supposed to be external to consciousness. The idea of the "real" self is in its general character essentially similar to that of the "real" not-self. Provided that the two classes of qualities have enough in common to be properly called qualities, and to be capable of being related to each other in groups, they may differ in kindtoto cœlowithout necessitating a difference of treatment from the point of view with which I am at present concerned. It is very evident, however, that those who have thought of the self as a "real" thing, distinct from consciousness, and yet to be in some way intelligibly represented in thought, have had a tendency to represent it very much as they have represented material objects. There has been a general effort to get rid of the idea of extension, but this has been shown rather in reducing the size of the object and attributing to it inconsistent space relations than in denying it such relations altogether. Bishop Butler's argument for immortality from the indiscerptibility of the uncompounded shows that hethought of the self as he thought of a material atom,[26]and Sir William Hamilton's scholastic notion of the ubiquity of the soul in the bodily organism—"all in the whole and all in every part"[27]—makes it sufficiently clear that he thought of it so, too; though, to be sure, such ubiquity would make of it a very queer atom indeed. If, then, the man, who holds to the self in the second sense of the word, calls up in using the word a mental complex like that which represents to him a "real" not-self, there is all the more reason why we should not expect to find anything in his thought which would suggest a new kind of sameness within the sphere of the "real" self. It remains, of course, to notice here, as in the case of the noumenal self, that any sense of the word same which has reference not so much to the things under discussion as to the relations of these things to other things, may, if self and not-self differ as to these relations, be applicable to the one and not to the other. Thus Sense VI may be regarded as inapplicable to the "real" self. I will discuss this point more fully in a few moments. With this one exception we may, therefore, I think, apply the kinds of sameness enumerated under Sec. 9 as obtaining in the sphere of "external" things to the "real" self also, and it would seem that no new kinds are to be added. It is unnecessary to repeat here the classification already given.Sec. 14.We come finally to the self as a something immediately perceived, the self as phenomenon or idea. I do not mean to use these names in a question-begging way, and I will try to exhaust all reasonable possibilities in discussing it and its samenesses.Now, whatever the self is, it would seem that it must be, inso far as it is a thing immediately known, either a part or the whole of consciousness, or one or the other of these regarded in some peculiar aspect or relation.If it be a part of consciousness, recognized as distinct from another part, the non-ego, we may reasonably maintain:1. That the perceived self is at any moment what it is—is the same with itself. The question whether it be simple and unanalyzable does not affect the problem. This is sameness in sense I.2. That if it be simple and unanalyzable, this simple element of consciousness may be the same at two different times, and if complex, two elements or two complexes of elements, belonging to different times may be the same. This is sameness in sense II.3. That if we regard the self as an object having a life-history, as consisting of successive elements united in a series as sense elements are united in the series which is for us a material object (immediately known), we may speak of its being the same on two successive days, even though it exhibit dissimilar qualities, primary reference being had not to likeness of elements, but to the experience which has been described at length in discussing sense III.4. That we may speak of two selves, of two elements of two selves (if selves be complex), or of two elements of one self (if one self may contain two such elements), as at any one time the same, to indicate that they are similar. This is sameness in sense IV. It should be kept in mind, however, that we never look upon one consciousness as containing two selves as it contains one self, or as it may contain two material objects (immediately known). The second self in mind is recognized as present only as an imagined object. Nevertheless it would seem quite proper to use the word same to mark this relation of similarity between the perceived self and an imagined self, just as we useit to mark a likeness of two material objects, or of one material object and the memory image of such an object.5. That we may speak of the self and its representative as the same. The memory image of a later time may stand for the self as experienced at an earlier. Unless it be claimed that yesterday's consciousness of self is actually to-day's consciousness, one must admit that the self remembered is the self known through its proxy. And one may in his reasonings about the self use as a symbol the pronoun "I," paying little attention as he goes along to what it stands for, and yet knowing it may serve in place of the obscure something it represents. These are instances of sameness in sense V.6. That we never use the word same in sense VI in speaking of the self as we do in speaking of the not-self. We do not say two men perceive the same self as we say they perceive the same tree or house. The familiar distinction between the subjective and the objective marks out the latter as in a sense, peculiar to itself, common and impersonal.I have already shown what we have in mind when we say two men see the same material thing. We have a picture of the thing, and of the bodies of the two men in a certain relation to it; and we imagine a copy of the thing as in some way connected with each of these bodies, and due to its relation to the thing. When relations to a material object are in question all the bodies in a consciousness are on a par. We may directly perceive the one thing and two or more bodies holding similar relations to it. But it is not so in the case of selves. The one self that we find in each consciousness seems to be peculiarly related to one body to the exclusion of others. And as we have not, in the case of this self, the conditions which led us to mark the similar relations of two human bodies (our representatives of the men) to one material object, by saying two men see the same thing, we, ofcourse, do not say that two men see the same self. The word same, in sense VI, we may regard, then, as inapplicable to the self as immediately known.[28]This appears to be due, however, not to the nature of this self in itself considered, but to its peculiar relation to the other things in a consciousness.Moreover, since the other two selves, the self as group of "real" qualities and the self as noumenon, are to us, as it were, shadows cast by the self immediately known—assumed to exist only because this is known to exist, and thought of as "present" only because this is known to be present—since, I say, these two selves hold in our thought this peculiar relation of dependence upon the self in consciousness, it is to be expected that we never find any one speaking of two men as seeing the same "real" self as one might readily speak of two men as seeing the same "real" tree. One says he has evidence that two men see the same "real" tree, when he has or can have in consciousness an immediately perceived tree and two immediately perceived human bodies in a certain relation to it. If no one had ever had this experience in the sphere of the immediately known, we have no reason to think any one would ever have thought of applying the phrase in question to a tree mediately known. And as we do not have a similar experience touching the self in consciousness, it is only natural to find that no one applies the phrase to any self out of consciousness. When things differ their shadows ought to differ too. Sameness in sense VI we may regard, then, as not attributable to self in any of the three senses of the word.7. That, finally, there seems no more reason why one should not call the self as immediately known the same with the self as"external" thing, or with the self as noumenon, than the not-self as similarly perceived the same with the not-self as similarly inferred. The supposed relationships are in the two cases exactly alike. Here we have sameness in sense VII.Sec. 15.If we claim that by the self as immediately known we understand not a part but the whole of consciousness, we should seem, unless we in some way modify our statement, to obliterate the distinction between self and not-self. Still, taking the words simply, and assuming that we mean by self all that is immediately known, we do not find that this will necessitate any important difference in the discussion of its samenesses. Consciousness as a whole is certainly what it is, or the same with itself, at any instant: two elements in it belonging to different times, or two complexes of elements belonging to different times may be the same, as being alike; it may be regarded as having a life history, and may from this point of view be called the same at different times without regard to similarity; two simultaneous elements or complexes of elements in it may be called the same to mark the fact that they resemble each other, or it, as a whole, may for the same reason be called the same with another consciousness (imagined); it and its representative (for example, the memory-image of its former self), may be called the same; and we may use the word same to indicate its relation to its supposed "real" correlate in an extra-consciousness world, whether we make this "thing" or "noumenon."
On Sameness and Identity.
And some require everything accurately stated; whereas, this accuracy annoys others, either because of their inability to follow a train of reasoning through, or because of its hair-splitting character; for accuracy does involve some hair-splitting.Aristotle, Metaph. Book I, The Less, c. 3.
And some require everything accurately stated; whereas, this accuracy annoys others, either because of their inability to follow a train of reasoning through, or because of its hair-splitting character; for accuracy does involve some hair-splitting.
Aristotle, Metaph. Book I, The Less, c. 3.
Section 1.There are few words the ambiguity of which has led to more confusion and profitless dispute than that of the wordsame. Men constantly use this word as though it had but one meaning, and that meaning were always clear, whereas it really gives expression to a number of widely different experiences, some of which are quite difficult of analysis. It is highly desirable that these experiences should not be confounded with each other, but kept clearly separate, as the consequences of such misconception are very far-reaching. How far-reaching, I shall in the pages to follow try to indicate.
It is my purpose to point out the differences in connotation of the several senses of this highly ambiguous word, to show the element which they have in common, and to trace some of the difficulties and absurdities which have sprung from using the word loosely and without proper discrimination. I shall have to plead guilty to something very like hair-splitting, but I may put forward in excuse the undeniable fact that "accuracy does involve some hair-splitting." If anyone prefers the self-contradictions and preposterous conclusions to which loose and unanalytic thought has so often led the unwary, he is welcome to them. I shall hold a few of these up to inspection after a while. For my part, I prefer a little quibbling at the outset of a discussionto a systematic incoherence all through it, with the chances of finding myself in acul-de-sacat the end. Whether I am successful in dissipating to some degree the fog which has hung about samenesses and obliterated important distinctions, each one must judge for himself.
The kinds of sameness I find to be as follows:
Sec. 2.I. We speak of any sensation, feeling, or idea, or complex of sensations, feelings, or ideas, as being the same with itself at any one instant. The pain in my finger is what it is at this moment. The finger itself (the immediate object of knowledge, a complex from sense and imagination) is, at each moment, what it is. It is to this sense of the word that the logical laws of Identity and Contradiction have ultimate reference.
Sec. 3.II. A sensation, feeling, or idea, or complex of sensations, feelings, or ideas, considered in itself and without reference to the world of material things, is called the same with one previously existent when the two are alike. I say, for example, that I feel to-day the same pain I felt yesterday, or that I have dreamt the same dream three times. This is evidently not sameness of the kind first mentioned.
Sec. 4.III. We speak of seeing the same material thing at different times. Suppose a man passing along a country road to look across a field at a distant tree. What he actually sees is a small bluish patch of color, which, interpreting in terms furnished by his previous experience, he supplements with material drawn from memory and imagination. On the following day he looks at the tree again from a nearer point and sees a larger green patch of color with distinct differences of shading and with a clear outline. This he interprets in a similar manner.
Now, without being a philosopher at all, and without conscious reference to anything beyond what he has experienced or can experience, he affirms that he has on two successive days seenthe same tree. I ask, just what is the significance of the word same as used in this connection? What peculiar experience has it been employed to mark? What is perceived on the one occasion is not the same as what is perceived on the other in the sense of the word first given (by "perceived" I mean existing in consciousness as a complex of mental elements. With the supposed external correlates of our percepts I am not now concerned). And it is equally clear that two such percepts need not be the same in the second sense of the word, for they may be quite unlike. In this case they are unlike, so far at least as what is actually in sensation is concerned.
What peculiar experience then does the word mark when the observer declares that he has seen the same tree twice?
We are now in the sphere of material objects (i. e., as experienced; I refer to the mental content and nothing more), and are not concerned with our experiences as isolated elements, but as grouped and arranged in series. Our total possible experience of any one object is a collection of partly simultaneous and partly successive actual and possible sensations which condition each other, and which we regard as a unit. The Idealist believes that this is all there is of the object, and all we mean when we commonly employ the word. The Realist assumes that there is something beyond and corresponding to this experience, and which is to be regarded as the real thing. He, however, must admit that all we can know of any object, in whatever sense we choose to employ that word, all our evidence for maintaining its existence and determining its qualities, must be drawn from this group of sensations. It is this that we immediately know, and anything inferred must be inferred from this.
From this it follows that when any one, whether Realist, or Idealist, or unreflective man, feels justified in asserting that what he perceives to-day is the same object he perceived yesterday, heis led to make this assertion on the strength of some distinction in his immediate experience, and he refers only secondarily, if at all, to anything beyond and external to this. The distinction which he marks by the word is this: He has reason to believe that the two percepts in question belong to the one series,—to the one life history, so to speak. He believes that had he cared to do so he could have filled up the gap between them by a continuous series of percepts, each conditioned by the preceding, and forming the one chain. Each represents to him the one object, in that each stands for the whole series, and his thought is much more taken up with the series as a whole than with the individuals composing it. He knows that the percepts in such a series can only be successive, never simultaneous. Had he reason to suspect that the two percepts we are discussing belong to different series of this kind, and that there is nothing in the nature of the case to prevent their being simultaneous, he would decide for two trees.
But each percept contains more than one mental element, and just as we may regard each percept as representing the whole series, so we may regard each element as representing the whole complex which may be experienced at one time, and through this the whole series of percepts. I say that the orange I smell is the same with the one I see; that I can reveal by striking a light the chair I fell over in the dark; that I hear rattling down the street the coach I stepped out of a few moments ago. It is not worth while to distinguish this use from the use of the word same just mentioned, for they agree in making a single experience stand for a whole group or series, which is assumed to be at least potentially present with each one. When we have had two experiences thus representing the one group, we say that we have in two ways, or on two occasions, experienced the same object. In this sense has the man in our illustration seen yesterdayand to-day the same tree. In this sense could he at the one time see and touch the same tree.
It is in this sense also that we use the word when we say that the object seen with the naked eye and the object seen through a telescope or under a microscope are the same. If I look at a distant object with the naked eye and then look at it through a telescope, what I actually see (or what is actually in the sense) is in the two cases very different. But just as seeing an object from a distance with the naked eye, I may walk towards it and substitute for the dim and vague percept which I first had a series of percepts increasing in clearness and ending in one which I regard as altogether satisfactory, so I may substitute at once this clear percept for the dim one, by the use of the telescope, and may know that it properly belongs to the series which, taken as a whole, constitutes my notion of the object. This I may know from the relations which this percept bears to the other percepts of the series, and which allow me to pass in my inferences from it to them as I can from any one of them to another. If, seeing a dim object upon the horizon, I raise a telescope and through it perceive the figure of a man, I know that I could have had a similar percept without any telescope by simply approaching the object. Conversely, on perceiving a man near at hand, I know I could have a similar percept from a distance by looking through a telescope. I call the man seen through the telescope the same as the man seen with the naked eye, for the same reason as I call the man seen by the eye at a distance the same with the man seen near at hand.
And the apparently non-extended speck which I see with the naked eye looks very different from the curious insect I see when I place a microscope over this speck, but I call them the same for the reason just given. If the insect as seen under the glass be divided, so is the speck as seen by the eye; if the insect istaken away, the speck disappears too. The series of percepts made possible through the microscope may be regarded as a continuation of the series which arises from approaching the eye to the object. Each member in it stands in a relation to this primary series similar to that illustrated above in the case of the telescope, and similar to that held by the terms of the primary series to each other. It should be kept clearly in mind that in all these cases the object (immediately perceived) is the same only in the sense pointed out,i. e., two or more percepts, which may, in themselves considered, be quite unlike each other, are recognized as in a certain relation to each other, as each representing the one series to which all belong. If one thinks he has reason to believe each percept represents not merely the series of percepts, but something different, which he infers and is pleased to call the "real" thing, he may be inclined to believe that in saying he sees the same object on two occasions he is referring to this something. It must be clear to him, however that all his evidence for the sameness of this something lies in the experience I have described, and it is to this that he must point in proof that it is the same. The percepts themselves are certainly not the same in any other sense than the one given. They are not identical, and they need not be alike. They merely stand for each other. Should one forget this, he will fall into blunders which I will illustrate at length when I speak of the common opinion on the subject of the infinite divisibility of space.
John Locke, in his famous "Essay,"[1]has made a distinction between the sameness of masses of inorganic matter and the sameness of organisms. That of the former, he says, consists in the sameness of their particles, while the sameness of a plant or animal does not consist in that of the particles which composeit at this time or at that, for they are in continual flux, but in the participation in the one life of the organism. It does not, however, appear to me that we have here a real difference in the kind of experience marked by the word. The difference is merely that in the one case we connect this experience, not with the object as a whole, but with the separate particles which compose it, which we take as so many separate objects each having a sameness of the kind just discussed, while in the other case we look upon the object as a whole, as a unit, and disregard any reference to its component parts. But whether we regard the object as a unit or take each of its ultimate parts as separate objects, we are thinking of the one kind of sameness. We are thinking of a certain life-history in which any one link may represent the whole, and any two links may be, from this point of view, regarded as equivalent. It is not merely with reference to plants and animals that we speak of sameness without regard to a sameness of constituent parts. We do it in this case simply because the organism furnishes us with a convenient unit, and one much more important as a unit than as an aggregate. We can make similar units when we please, and consider their sameness without thinking of their parts. We speak of the same nation as existing through many generations, and of the same corporation as surviving many deaths. Whether the object we are considering be naturally indivisible, or composite and assumed a unit for convenience, when we speak of it as the same at two different times we are referring to the one experience. Locke does make here a distinction worth noticing, but it does not mark two fundamentally different uses of the word.
Sec. 5.IV. Two objects are called the same, and two other mental experiences occurring at the one time are called the same, from the fact that they are recognized as alike. The botanist, finding that two plants belong to the one class callsthem the same without any intention of confounding the two individuals. Nor does one who places his two hands in warm water and declares that he has the same feeling in both, confound the two streams of sensation. The fact that only likeness is meant is here clearly recognized. It is not, I think, as clearly recognized when similar sensations or other mental experiences (considered singly), occurring atdifferenttimes, are called the same. In that case they are sometimes spoken of as if they were material objects having a continuous sameness after the fashion explained above.
Sec. 6.V. The word same is used to signify the relation between any mental experience and that which is regarded as its representative. This representative may or may not resemble it. We speak, for example, of calling up in memory this or that object seen at some past time. The memory-image is certainly not the same with the original percept in Sense I. When we say that the object of memory is the past, we cannot mean this, for it is plainly false. Nor is it thought of as merely like it, as in Sense II. It is thought of as a something which represents it—stands for it in a peculiar way. Just what this implies I will not here attempt to discover. It is enough for my purpose to point out that when we say a man remembers an object we do not mean merely to indicate the presence in his imagination of a resembling picture, but to include a certain relation between this picture and an original percept.
It is not easy to describe what is present in an act of memory. When I am thinking of another man as calling to mind something from his past experience, I bring before my own mind two pictures, one representing his original percept, and one his present memory-image. Holding these before me together, I recognize them as related, but distinct. I use the word same to denote their relation. But the person who is exercising hismemory does not have before his mind two objects, an original and a copy, with an observed relation between them. He has not the original, or it would not be an act of memory. When, however, he reflects upon his experience as I have done, he represents it to himself as I have represented it to myself. He speaks as if, in the act of remembering, he were conscious of two objects and could compare them. He speaks of recognizing the memory picture as a copy and representative of the original percept. Language, as commonly used, adapts itself to this way of regarding the matter, and I may leave a further analysis of it to the student of the memory, merely pointing out that, whatever is implied in the experience, a common use of the word same is to denote this relation between any mental experience and the memory-image which represents it.
It will be seen that this kind of sameness may be presupposed in affirming sameness in other senses of the word. When I compare a present sensation with one felt some days since, and affirm that they are the same, the latter must enter into the comparison through its representative in memory. It is not itself present at the time of the comparison.
And when I say that I have seen the same tree yesterday and to-day, I mean, as I have explained, that the two percepts belong to the one series; but since my experience of yesterday cannot be itself present in my consciousness to-day, it can take its place in the series, as thought to-day, only by proxy. When I say that I have in my mind the same series on two successive days, I evidently mean that it is the same series in the sense in which any experience and its representative in memory are the same.
Other less important instances might be given of this use of the word same to express the relation between any experience and its representative. We say that we see an object in amirror, when we mean that we see its reflected image. We speak of seeing in a picture this man or that. When we have found for anything a satisfactory substitute we say it is the same thing. Such uses of the word are not likely to deceive anyone, and I will not dwell upon them. Their meaning is too plain to be mistaken.
Sec. 7.VI. We constantly speak of two men as seeing the same thing. In this we have a sense of the word which demands careful analysis. For the sake of clearness, and to avoid ambiguity, I will confine myself here, as I have done in the foregoing sections, to an examination of what is actually experienced by the men, and will defer all consideration of existences assumed as lying beyond a possible experience in an extra-mental world, for discussion in sections to follow.
The question which interests me at present is simply this: What experience is it that leads a man to affirm that he and someone else are perceiving the same object? The Realist (in the modern sense) would say that this experience is only his evidence that he and another are perceiving the same object, meaning by object what I have referred to as believed to lie beyond his experience; while the Idealist would say that this experience exhausts the whole matter. The Realist must, however, admit, as I have brought out in a different connection, that all his evidence for the existence of the object (in his sense), and for any affirmations whatever regarding it, lying within the field of the immediately known, any words, which have been coined to express qualities of, or distinctions concerning, this object, would retain a use and significance as marking distinctions within this field even if the object were supposed non-existent. Whether any such duplicate of what is immediately perceived exists or not is a question apart. Since we admittedly draw all our distinctions from the field of the immediatelyknown and then carry them over to such objects, and notvice versa, we may be sure that we would go on saying that two men see the same object in any case. I myself give the preference to that the existence of which is an indubitable fact, and prefer using the wordobjectto indicate the complex in consciousness. I have, however, no desire to assume any point in dispute by juggling with a word, and will try to keep clearly in mind the meaning of the word thus assumed whenever I use it.
Now, the experience which leads me to say that I and another man see the same object is just this: I perceive a particular object, and in a certain relation to it I perceive the body of another man. From a past experience of my own body in relation to objects and from reasoning by analogy, I have come to connect such a relation of another body to the object with the thought of another consciousness of the object as connected with that body. Just as I perceive my own body to perform certain actions when I am conscious of perceiving the object, so I perceive this other body with which I have connected in thought a consciousness of the object to perform similar acts in response to similar relations towards the object. It is wholly a matter of observation in my own case that the perception of my own body in this or that relation to an object is asine qua nonto the perception of the object. And it is wholly a matter of reasoning from like to like that leads me to connect in thought sensations or percepts with any other animal body whatever. When I say, therefore, that I and another man are perceiving the same thing, there is in my mind a complex consisting of a percept or idea of the thing, a percept or idea of the man's body, and the thought of a percept connected with this body. When I say that he is thinking of us both as seeing the same thing, I call up in mind a similar complex and connect it in thought with his body. Whatever I may believe as to the existence or non-existenceof things lying beyond this sphere, and supposed to cause these experiences, these are the experiences to which I ultimately refer when I speak of two men as seeing the same object, and these furnish the whole ground for the existence of the phrase.
The percept of the object which I connect in thought with the other man's body need not be wholly similar to my percept of the object. The man who has discovered that he is color-blind, does not suppose that men not similarly afflicted see just what he does in looking at a cherry tree full of ripe fruit. Nevertheless, he still speaks of himself and others as seeing the same objects. If another man's body is not exactly like mine, I am not justified by argument from similarity in reading into it an exactly similar experience. It is not the similarity of the two percepts that I am thinking of chiefly when I speak of them as percepts of the same object. I am thinking of the relation in which I suppose them to stand to each other. I think of the possible existence of the one under given circumstances as conditioning the possible existence of the other.
Sec. 8.VII. When a man in an early stage of reflection upon his experience has decided that objects immediately perceived are not the real things but merely their mental copies or representatives, he may think of these "real" things in several ways. He may believe in a world of "real" things, consisting of groups of "real" qualities, external to consciousness; he may accept such "real" things, but add to them a substratum or substance, distinct from the qualities; or he may believe that the "real" exists as mere substratum, substance, or noumenon, and that all qualities, being merely its revelation to mind, exist within the circle of consciousness alone. The first position is one not often taken. The second is that held by Locke,[2]who believedthat, corresponding to our ideas of objects, there exist substances possessed of certain primary qualities, and having an underlying substance or substratum. The third represents the view of the Kantian,[3]who, to be consistent, must deny to his noumenon any qualities whatever. How he is to do this without having it lapse into utter nothingness is a problem for him to solve.
The disciple of Locke has, therefore, in discussing all the uses of the word same, to consider the sameness of:
1. Things immediately known.
2. Groups of "real" qualities in an extra-mental world, more or less like what is immediately known.
3. Substance; the "I know not what" to which Locke clung through all difficulties.
The man who holds the first of the three views above mentioned need only consider the first and the second of these; and the Kantian need only consider the first and the third, rebaptizing the latter "noumenon" or "thing-in-itself."
Omitting for later consideration the sameness of the self or ego, I have already discussed the uses of the word same within the field of the immediately known. It remains to consider the sameness of what is believed to lie beyond this, and to belong to a different kind of a world.
When men discuss these supposed realities, in what senses of the word same may they reasonably think of them as the same?
When a common, unreflective man, whose mind has not been, in the words of Bishop Berkeley, "debauched by learning," looks at a tree and thinks about it, he believes he sees a real tree, at a certain real distance from his body, and of a given real height and figure. It does not occur to him to make any distinction between the tree immediately perceived, and an inferred second tree, not immediately perceived, but represented by the former. There is the tree; he sees it; he can touch it; it seems to him but one: and he always talks as if there were but one tree to be discussed in the premises. That one tree, he thinks, is really extended; is really out in space beyond his body; is, in short, what it appears to be. To his unreflective mind this tree does not seem to be a representative or to be seen through a representative, but to be seen immediately and just where it really is.
But when a man has begun to battle with the difficulties of reflection, and has learned to make a distinction between things and his ideas of the things, he will probably fall into unforeseen perplexities about this tree. He reflects that, when he closes his eyes, the tree disappears; that when he approaches it it looks green, and when he recedes from it it grows blue; that a man with a peculiar defect in his vision does not see it colored as he does; that when he makes a pressure on the side of one eyeball he sees two trees where before he saw only one; that when he makes such a pressure upon both eyeballs and moves them about a little he sees two trees moving about, although he knows real trees can not ordinarily be made to move about so easily. Such reflections lead him to distinguish between the tree as he sees it, and the tree as it really is, and he defines the tree as he sees it as the tree immediately known, and the real tree as the tree mediately known, a cause of the existence of the former. He now thinks that he sees directly only copies or representativesof real things, and as he believes these copies or representatives to be in his mind, and usually talks as if his mind were in his head, or at least in his body, he concludes that things immediately known must in many instances be much smaller than they seem, or perhaps lack extension altogether. How can a tree thirty feet high be in a man's mind? It is true, that, when I press upon my eyeballs in the manner described, I seem to see two trees of that size moving; but must it not be a mistake? Must we not assume that what is immediately seen onlyseemsextended, and stands for an extended thing which is grasped through it? So our philosopher learns to distrust the immediate object of knowledge; to regard it as in some sense unreal as compared with what it represents; and to deny to it those properties which it apparently possesses. It is not extended, but it stands for extension; it is not colored, but it stands for color; it is not real, but it stands for reality.
It is natural, however, for one who has gone thus far to go farther. When he reflects again upon the fact that he sees the tree of a different color at different distances; when he remembers that colors vary with the quality of the light by which they are seen; when he and his neighbor dispute concerning the true color of the one tree which he sees dotted with red leaves, and which his opponent claims to see of a uniform color; then he may well begin to ask himself what is the true color of the "real" tree, or whether it is certain that it has any color at all? May not, then, the "real" tree have only some of the qualities that we ordinarily attribute to trees? Perhaps, the space qualities?
Or, worse yet, since some of the qualities that the ordinary man attributes to trees may be regarded as existing only in a shadowy way in our ideas, why may not the same be true of all the other qualities? How do we know that "real" trees are extended? How do we know that "real" extension must beassumed as the cause of the delusive apparent extension of our ideas, if it is true that "real" color need not thus be assumed as a cause of our sensations of color? What if the "real" thing exists only as an indescribable and incomprehensible somewhat, which we must assume as a cause of the immediately known, but of which we can know nothing more? When one has once begun this slippery descent, it is not easy to say where he may find a peg to stay him in his course.
Suppose, however, he is content to strip the "real" thing of what are commonly called the secondary qualities of matter, and to leave to it what are known as the primary. He will follow the example of the wholly unreflective man and speak of it in such a way as to suggest that the thing itself is something apart from its "real" qualities. A tree, he will say,hasqualities. It would certainly sound odd to hear him say itisqualities. And he will very possibly go on to justify the use of the language he employs by distinguishing between the "real" qualities represented by his mental picture of the tree and an obscure something which he assumes as underlying them; thus embracing the Lockian distinction of ideas, "real" qualities, and substance. He may conclude, it is true, that substance in this sense of the word is chimerical, and that the belief in it arises out of a misunderstanding of the significance of language; but if he has gone so far as to assume duplicates of things immediately known, in the form of "real" qualities, it is more probable that he will be inclined to complete his classes of beings by adding the third.[4]
Now, it does not concern me to consider whether this change of view is to be regarded as a real progress in reflective knowledge or as a progressive decline and fall of the unreflective man.The point which concerns me is this: The unreflective man talks as if but one tree were under discussion. The man who reflects uses the same forms of speech: and even when he believes that he must distinguish between the tree immediately known and the obscure something which he has come to look upon as its cause, or between the tree immediately known, the bundle of "real" qualities inferred, and the obscure something that he connects with these, he still goes on talking as if he had only one thing to talk about. The danger of such a proceeding is obvious. If I talk about two or three things as though they were one, it is but natural that I should sometimes confuse them with each other. Should proof be forthcoming for one of these, it would be but natural for me to fall occasionally into the error of supposing that it somehow applies to the others. If I go on saying "the tree" when I mean one tree and something else, two trees, or two trees and something else, it is only to be expected that I sooner or later come to grief in my reasonings.
And it should be noted that this peculiar ambiguity in the names of things entails a parallel ambiguity in the use of the words by which we indicate the mind's recognition of the presence of things. We commonly speak of a drunken man'sseeingtwo trees, where a sober man sees one. We speak of an insane man ashearingvoices, when no one has spoken. We say that weseethe maples are turning red, even when we believe that color may not properly be attributed to the mediate object of knowledge. On the other hand, those who hold to the existence of "real" objects of the kind before mentioned, generally maintain that in referring to things in space, their positions and mutual relations, we are giving attention, not to the immediately known, but to its "external" double. "I see, feel, perceive," it is "said, not the image, and not the constituents of the image (the ideas), but the external object bymeansof the image."[5]If one holds that this "external" object presupposes a substance, a something distinct from a group of qualities, there is nothing to prevent his maintaining, should he wish to do so, that in saying "I see a tree," primary reference is had to this substance or "reality." Of course, if, in the sentence "I see a tree," the word "tree" can have three meanings, it follows that there is also a possibility of taking in three senses the word "see." It is hardly necessary to point out that, unless one is very careful, "seeing" in one sense may result in "believing" in another, as "kicking" did in the famous case of Dr. Johnson and the stone. The caution is pertinent with respect to any other word used in the same general way as we use the word "see."
I have said that when a man abandons his original unreflective position and learns to distinguish between things immediately known and other things they are supposed to represent, he goes on using the common language, and talking as though there were but one thing under consideration. Now, men do not do this merely in common conversation and in writing about matters of everyday life, but they do it in the very books that have been written to prove that each thing is thus double or triple. John Locke, for example, begins the very chapter in which he is about to draw the distinction between the secondary and primary qualities of bodies (i. e., between the constituents of things immediately known and the constituents of their "external" correlates), as well as to enlighten us on our ideas of substances, with the following words:[6]
"The mind being, as I have declared, furnished with a great number of the simple ideas, conveyed in by the senses, as they are found in exterior things, or by reflexion on its own operations, takes notice also, that a certain number of these simple ideas go constantly together; which, being presumed to belongto one thing, and words being suited to common apprehensions, and made use of for quick despatch, are called, so united in one subject, by one name; which, by inadvertency, we are apt afterward to talk of, and consider as one simple idea, which indeed is a complication of many ideas together: because, as I have said, not imagining how these simple ideas can subsist by themselves, we accustom ourselves to suppose somesubstratumwherein they do subsist, and from which they do result, and which therefore we callsubstance."
It is clear enough from this, as it is clear enough from other passages in the same book, that Locke talked as though the complex of simple ideas in consciousness were the very same thing (in Sense I) as the group of "real" qualities outside of consciousness. And no careful reader of his book can avoid seeing that the confusion of his language is a fair index to the confusion of his thoughts with regard to the two.[7]It is little better in the case of "bodies" and substance. In the passage just given, he would seem to makesubstancean obscure something underlying groups of ideas, and not groups of real qualities, but in the next sentence he makes it a substratum of the qualities which produce in us ideas. In many passages[8]he distinguishes betweensubstanceandsubstances, by which latter he means groups of "real" qualities with the added substratum or substance; as such substances he instances oak, elephant, iron. He emphasizes the fact that substance is not to be confounded with substances, which are things of different sorts.[9]In so far as the substances are bundles of qualities, they are known to us through sensation.[10]In so far as they are also substance, they cannot be known to us through sensation, for the idea of substance is not knownthrough sensation.[11]We are not then to look upon substance as such a constituent part of "a substance" as a quality is. The two belong to different classes. And if we offer proof for the existence of "real" substances, which is evidently applicable to them only as bundles of qualities—proof from sensation—then substance is overlooked altogether. It is significant that Locke, having thus put together under one head as "a substance" an oak viewed as a bundle of "real" qualities and an oak viewed as substratum, proceeded to argue as if he had but one thing to prove when he felt called upon to defend the real existence of substances. In his chapters on "The Extent of Human Knowledge," the "Reality of Knowledge," and "Our Knowledge of the Existence of Other Things,"[12]he devotes himself wholly to proving things as bundles of qualities, and pays no more attention to substance than if it had never entered his thought. If we take these chapters as authoritative, we must banish substance from the sphere of knowledge altogether.
As another instance of a use of language calculated to produce confusion, I may offer the following from Sir William Hamilton: "Whatever we know is not known as it is, but only as it seems to us to be,"[13]—a use of words which would certainly indicate that the immediate and mediate objects of knowledge are one. And what would we infer from such a sentence as this: "Thus the consciousness of an Inscrutable Power manifested to us through all phenomena, has been growing ever clearer; and must eventually be freed from its imperfections. The certainty that on the one hand such a Power exists, while on the other hand its nature transcends intuition and is beyond imagination, is the certainty towards which intelligence has from the first been progressing."[14]Or this: "We are obliged to regard every phenomenon as a manifestation of some Power by which we are acted upon; though Omnipresence is unthinkable, yet, as experience discloses no bounds to the diffusion of phenomena, we are unable to think of limits to the presence of this Power; while the criticisms of Science teach us that this Power is Incomprehensible. And this consciousness of an Incomprehensible Power, called Omnipresent from inability to assign its limits, is just that consciousness on which Religion dwells."[15]
"After concluding that we cannot know the ultimate nature of that which is manifested to us, there arise the questions—What is it that we know? In what sense do we know it?"[16]Or what shall one say to this: "Our consciousness of the unconditioned being literally the unconditioned consciousness, or raw material of thought, to which in thinking we give definite forms, it follows that an ever-present sense of real existence is the very basis of our intelligence."[17]
Now, if the consciousness of an "inscrutable power" is not the "inscrutable power" itself; if the existence of such a "power" does not mean simply its existence in consciousness; if the phenomena in which, it is assumed, a "power" is manifested, are to be kept separate in thought from the "power," so that we shall be in no danger of confounding a consciousness of certain phenomena with consciousness of an "incomprehensible power;" if our "consciousness of the unconditioned" is to be kept in mind as signifying merely our "unconditioned consciousness," and an "ever-present sense of real existence" as signifying only an ever-present sense of "raw material" in consciousness; then it is high time that these sentences and all such as these be re-writtenwith some regard for lucidity, accuracy and consistency. How can a reader help confounding things when he is thus taught by the very man whose business it is to distinguish between them? The blind led by the blind is a cheerful spectacle compared with this.
Nothing can be more evident than that the man who has abandoned his original unreflective belief in the singleness of the perceived object, and has come to believe in it as having one or more "external" correlates, should keep distinctly in mind that an immediate and a mediate object are, by hypothesis, two distinct things: that he has never had any direct experience whatever save of the one; and that all distinctions that he makes with regard to the other, the very notions of its existence, reality, and externality, have been drawn from the sphere of the immediate and carried over to it in thought. And he should never allow himself to forget, that, when he says he has passed in thought from the immediate to the mediate object, he cannot mean literally that his thought is now occupied directly upon this "external" thing—that it is itself present to mind. He should remember that he can only mean that he has such an experience as the following:
He has in mind the immediate object, and a mental picture of a duplicate of this standing in a causal relation to it and represented by it; or, he has (if a Lockian), in addition to these two, a third highly vague and indefinite mental image (the idea of "substance"), which he connects with the image just described, as he has connected that with the immediate object; or (if a Kantian), he has in mind the immediate object, and, connected directly with that, such a vague image as has just been described. This is what he actually has in mind so far asobjectsare concerned. He does not, however, merely recognize the existence in his mind of these different images in their relations to each other, buthe looks upon this mental arrangement as somehow justified by experience and embodying truth.
When we ask what the word "justified" can mean in this connection, it is not easy to find an answer. Within the sphere of the immediately known the meaning of the word is plain enough. When I have constructed in my imagination a certain image or complex of images embodying a belief as to matter of fact, I say the mental operation is justified when I can substitute for the idea the percept which it is supposed to represent, or can know indirectly that this might be done according to known laws of the appearance and disappearance of percepts. Thus I perceive the outside of a tree-trunk and form an idea of what lies under the bark. I have reason to know that by stripping off the bark I can substitute for the image I have formed the corresponding percept. And if I see at a distance a similar tree growing upon an inaccessible cliff, and form an image of what lies under its bark, I may still regard this as justified by the possibility of referring to cases in which a similar image, arising out of a similar experience, has been found to be justified. It is a legitimate inference that, if circumstances were somewhat different, the proper percept might take the place of this image too. It is evident, however, that the word "justified" cannot be used in this or any analogous sense in speaking of the relation not of an image to a percept, but of an image or a percept to a something that, by hypothesis, cannot itself enter into experience at all. What then can the word mean? It at first interests us to know that "some Snarks are Boojums," but our interest lapses when we discover that we have absolutely no mark by which we may know a Boojum from anything else.
But I must not be drawn into digressions. The points with which I am concerned are these:—First: When a man says he sees this tree or that house, he ordinarily speaks as if there werebut the one object in his thought. If he distinguishes at all between an immediate and a mediate object, the language that he uses would not indicate that he does so. And even after men have entered into lengthy arguments for the purpose of marking this distinction, and insisting that things are not single as they seem to the unreflective, they still indulge in this peculiar use of language, which would imply either that they have forgotten for the time being their own distinction between the immediate and the mediate, or that they regard the two as the same in Sense I, and to be treated as one. Certainly, in their reasonings upon this subject, men who hold to the two kinds of objects do confound them with one another, and strengthen their faith in the two by this misconception, as I shall show later. We have here, then, what we may call a kind of sameness, or pseudo-sameness, which deserves investigation, and which one should be careful not to confound with sameness of other kinds. Whether the word same is commonly applied in the premises is indifferent to my purpose. In the remainder of the present section I will consider the relation between the mental representative and its assumed correlatives.
Second: If we are to accept not merely the world of objects immediately known, but also a world or two worlds corresponding to this, and yet distinct from it, we cannot be sure our list of samenesses is complete unless we traverse in our search for the different kinds all the spheres of being in which we believe, and of which we think we can have some knowledge. In the section following this one I will try to discover the kinds of sameness which a believer in "external" things may reasonably attribute to them within their own sphere. In this there is no question of the relation of something in one sphere to a correlative something in another.
For the first point. What is in a man's mind when he is thinking of his percept as having a "real" object corresponding to it,I have shown to be as follows: He has in mind an immediate object and a duplicate of this, not necessarily altogether like it, imagined as standing in a causal relation to it and represented by it. When it occurs to him that this imagined duplicate is itself an immediate object and not the "real" one, he does as much for it, and provides it with a similar duplicate. In every case, when he tries to think of an object immediately perceived as having a "real" correlate, he simply furnishes it with an imaginary double in this way. What else is he to do? He is trying to think of two objects; the "real" object cannot, it is said, be in the mind; he must then imagine it. If he is a Lockian he will have in mind the immediate object and two imaginary ones, one signifying the "real" object as a bundle of qualities, and the other, a highly vague one, picturing the "substance."
Now, since this is all that can be before the man's mind, any kind of sameness which concerns the percept and the "real" thingmust mean to him some relation between the immediate object and the image or images of which I have spoken. When this is realized it is seen that we have here not a new kind of sameness, a distinct experience, but a kind already discussed. The relation between the immediate object and the images described is simply that between representative and thing represented. This I have already examined within the field of what is recognized as immediately known. Here, too, it would seem that we are in the field of the immediately known, since we have to do with percepts and ideas, but though these images are in this field, they are here, so to speak, under protest, and their framing is supposed to be justified[18]only by something assumed to be not in this field. When this something is thought of at all it is thought of in just the way I have described. This is what thinking it means. Nevertheless, this duplicate world is assumed tobe a world apart, and for this reason I have considered the sameness of percepts and their corresponding "real" objects by itself. It gives us sameness in sense seventh.
In writing the foregoing I have had in mind chiefly the position of the Lockian. I need not consider at length that taken by the Kantian, for what I have said will, with little change, apply to it also. If I hold to a "noumenon" as corresponding to my "phenomenon," and yet deny to it all qualities whatsoever, I must, to retain any appearance of consistency, represent it in my mind in the very vaguest possible way. Nevertheless, I must represent it, or I am not thinking of it at all, and I must relate the phenomenon and this vague representation in the way described. A true consistency would, of course, make impossible the whole process, for it would make impossible the giving of any quality at all to the representation, and the putting any relation between it and the phenomenon. In so dark a night cats do not merely turn grey, they disappear. On the other hand, if one is too liberal with this "noumenon," it palpably ceases to be a "noumenon," and degenerates into something very like a "phenomenon." The illusion must not be lost. Both these conflicting tendencies may be well illustrated in Mr. Spencer's "Unknowable." If we really refuse to allow to the consciousness of it "any qualitative or quantitative expression whatever,"[19]our vague image wholly disappears and there is nothing left in our consciousness but the "phenomenon." While if we follow the "First Principles" in coaxing it back into existence by allowing it reality,[20]and causality,[21]and a freedom from limits,[22]and printing its name with a capital letter,[23]as though it were even better than other things—if we do all this there is danger of the convalescent's becoming toorobust altogether. The problem has its parallel in the practical problem of paying wages:—one must not pay too little, or he loses his laborer; nor too much, or he loses his money. The thing is to find the happy mean which will keep an object of thought before a man's mind and yet not make him lose all appearance of consistency.
But in which ever of the ways mentioned a man thinks of "real" things, he does what I have described. And when he implies that the immediately known and the "real" are in some sense the same, as he does when he talks as if there were but the one object, or asserts that we do not know things as they are in themselves but only as they appear to us; he really uses the word same in the fifth sense that I have given. The fact that he is using it to indicate the relation between percepts and a certain class of ideas which he has come to regard as duplicates of his percepts does not make the use of the word a new one. Whatever may be the state of affairs outside of his consciousness, this is all that takes place within it; and the word same, used in this connection, can mean no more to him than I have said.
Sec. 9.To avoid needless prolixity I will class together and very briefly treat of the kinds of sameness which one may attribute to "external" things. It is not necessary to go at length into the discussion of these, for since the "external" world, as it is assumed by those who have faith in it, is, to the man thinking it, simply a more or less modified duplicate of the world of things immediately perceived; and since all ground for attributing to it any determinations at all must be found in that which is immediately perceived; we may naturally look to find in it nothing that we have not already found in this immediate world. How, indeed, could anything else get into it? We cannot haveinmind what is by hypothesisoutof mind. The "real" world is then, in the mind of the man who thinks it, a world ofimagined objects, and the world of imagination depends for its material upon the world of sense. A little reflection will show that the kinds of sameness of these "realities" are only the kinds of sameness already discussed duplicated, and assumed to belong to a new world.
1. An "external" quality or group of qualities may be said to be thesamewith itself at any one instant. Here we have Sense I carried over into the field of imagined duplicates.
2. An "external" quality existing at one time may be said to be thesamewith an "external" quality existing at another time, to indicate that the two are similar. The same thing may be true of any group of qualities. Here we have Sense II.
3. The "external" bundle of qualities, which formed for Locke the knowable element in a thing or "body," may be regarded as being thesameat two different times—as having, so to speak, a life-history. Here one is simply calling up in thought the experience described under Sense III.
4. Two "external" things (bundles of "real" qualities), or two "external" qualities, existing at one time, may be called thesameto mark similarity. Here we have Sense IV.
5. An "external" thing (in the sense just indicated), or an "external" quality, may be called thesamewith its representative. If this representative be the immediate object of knowledge, we have the experience described as Sense VII. If it be another "external" thing or quality,e. g., an "external" picture in an "external" mirror, an "external" statue in "external" marble, etc., we have Sense V.
6. Two men may be said to perceive thesame"external" thing. In saying this one simply calls up in mind the complex described at length under VI, but makes the duplicate, which is, to him, the thing, stand in the complex in the place of the percept, this being now regarded as a mere representative.
7. An "external" thing may be said to be thesamewith its representative in consciousness or with the substance or noumenon assumed to underlie it. Here we have Sense VII.
It would seem scarcely necessary to mention this last, since, if the representative in consciousness can be called the same with its "real" correlate, it would seem self-evident that the "real" correlate may be called the same with it. I add it, however, for the sake of completeness. It should be noted that in this last kind of sameness we step over the limits of any one class of being, ideas, things (as bundles of qualities), or substance. The word is used to denote a relation between something in one class and a corresponding thing in another class.
In the foregoing I have been considering the sameness of "real" or "external" things regarded as bundles of qualities. If one ask concerning the sameness of Locke's "substance," or the "noumenon" of other writers, I would say that our notions of this must vary with the kind of being we allow this nebulous entity. Strict consistency in dealing with a noumenon as sometimes defined means, of course, its utter collapse. If, however, we keep anything in mind at all, we must carry over to it at least the first of the kinds of sameness described. I do not think it would be hard to show that several other kinds are carried over in despite of consistency by men who hold to this shadowy something under one name or another.
As, however, we do not find here any new sense of the word same, but mere repetition in a new field (if one may call it such), it seems unnecessary to dwell upon this part of my subject.
I have not discussed at all the sameness of things from the point of view of an adherent of that Natural Realism which claims that we know immediately real things and yet holds that real things are not our perceptions themselves, but something extra-mental. This view is so incoherent that it is not likely tobe taken seriously by men who have learned to reflect at all. I may say, however,en passant, that it does not add to the kinds of sameness I have described: it merely confounds them one with another, and falls into the inconsequences which naturally result from so doing.
Sec. 10.When we come to the question of the sameness of the Self or Ego we are, if possible, on more debatable ground than heretofore. The whole subject of our knowledge of the Self lies as yet, in the opinion of many, very much in the dark. Without undertaking the task of defining narrowly what this elusive something is, it would seem that I may safely make concerning it at least the following assertions:
In using the word self, we may have reference either to what is immediately known as appearing in the circle of consciousness, the phenomenon, or to a something supposed to lie beyond this sphere and to be known only through its representative in consciousness.
Now this something beyond may be looked at in various ways. John Locke, in discussing the not-self, made the three-fold division of idea, bundle of "real" qualities, and substance. He might with equal reason have distinguished in a similar way between the self as idea (the immediately known), the self as a bundle of "real" qualities (not immediately known), and the self as substance. As a matter of fact, however, he did not put the not-self and the self upon the same plane. He seemed to think that we know the self more immediately, and to hold that it enters consciousness as the bundle of "real" qualities[24]which, in the case of matter, is assumed to lie beyond. The "substance" of the self, however, he condemns to outer darkness and the company of material substance. To me there seems no reason, admitting the right to pass at all beyond the immediately perceived,for making the distinction which he does make. And as one, who has followed him with assent in his treatment of the not-self, may, with some justice complain of his inconsistency and refuse to follow him here, I mention the position he might have taken as well as the position he actually did take with respect to the self and its existences.
Sec. 11.The word self may then be regarded as referring either:
1. To the self as phenomenon, a something immediately perceived, a part or the whole of our conscious experience;
2. To a complex of "real" qualities beyond and represented by the self as it appears in consciousness;
3. To the substance of self, or self as noumenon, a vague and ill-defined something, supposed to be distinct from and to underlie phenomena or "real" qualities; or
4. To two, or to all, of these taken together.
If the word is used in the last of these senses any inquiry concerning sameness must split up its complex meaning and treat separately the different elements included. It remains, then, to inquire what kinds of sameness we may attribute to the self in the first three senses given. I will take them in reverse order.
Sec. 12.With respect to the third sense, which makes it refer to the "substance" of Locke or the "noumenon" of other writers: all the difficulties which arise out of the endeavor to attribute sameness of any kind to any substance or noumenon obtain here also. But it seems on the surface more glaringly inconsistent in the adherent of noumena to discriminate between different kinds as admitting of differences of treatment than it does for him to suppose them capable of treatment at all. Things that differ cannot be conceived as differing except in qualities, and here there is question not of qualities but of noumena. If one is to retain any appearance of consistency, hemust not maintain that the word same is applicable in any given sense to certain noumena and not to others. If he does so, he openly abandons his noumena to a phenomenal fate. And, as a matter of fact, I think it is plain that those believers in noumena, who distinguish them from one another, yet think of them in just the one way. If we take the utterances of a good representative of the class, Sir William Hamilton, we may see that although he distinguishes between the noumenal ego and the noumenal non-ego, not only do his clearest statements make such a distinction out of the question, but the distinction drawn is so vague and insignificant[25]that the two noumena may be thought of and reasoned about in the one way. Phenomena being abstracted, what was in his mind when he spoke of the one was probably in no respect different from what was in his mind when he spoke of the other. In so far, then, as the noumena themselves are concerned, it would seem that any kind of sameness which we may predicate of the noumenal not-self we may predicate on the same ground and with equal justice of the noumenal self, andvice versa. If, however, any sense of the word same marks a relation between a noumenon and some other thing or things, and if the two noumena differ as respects this relation, then this kind of sameness may be attributed to the one and not to the other. It may be claimed that we indicate just such a relation in using the word same in Sense VI; and that, whatever one might do, one would under no circumstances speak of two men as perceiving the same self, noumenal or any other. I shall discuss this point when I come to discuss the sameness of self as phenomenon.
I may add here that when one obliterates the distinction between noumena by plunging them into the darkness of the "unknowable," there can, of course, be no question of a new senseof the word same in the field I am discussing. On the general question of noumenal sameness, all that it seems to me necessary to say I have said before.
Sec. 13.The second sense of the word self would make it a complex of "real" qualities beyond, and represented by, the self as it appears in consciousness. Now, I do not think that the fact that one would attribute to the self, so considered, one class of qualities, and to the not-self another class, would, when the two "real" objects are considered in themselves, prevent one's ascribing to the former all the kinds of sameness which one may ascribe to the latter, or would justify the assumption of a new kind of sameness proper only to the former. In discussing the sameness of "external" things I have not made any one kind of it dependent upon the peculiar quality of their qualities, if I may so speak. I considered them only as groups of qualities in general, supposed to be external to consciousness. The idea of the "real" self is in its general character essentially similar to that of the "real" not-self. Provided that the two classes of qualities have enough in common to be properly called qualities, and to be capable of being related to each other in groups, they may differ in kindtoto cœlowithout necessitating a difference of treatment from the point of view with which I am at present concerned. It is very evident, however, that those who have thought of the self as a "real" thing, distinct from consciousness, and yet to be in some way intelligibly represented in thought, have had a tendency to represent it very much as they have represented material objects. There has been a general effort to get rid of the idea of extension, but this has been shown rather in reducing the size of the object and attributing to it inconsistent space relations than in denying it such relations altogether. Bishop Butler's argument for immortality from the indiscerptibility of the uncompounded shows that hethought of the self as he thought of a material atom,[26]and Sir William Hamilton's scholastic notion of the ubiquity of the soul in the bodily organism—"all in the whole and all in every part"[27]—makes it sufficiently clear that he thought of it so, too; though, to be sure, such ubiquity would make of it a very queer atom indeed. If, then, the man, who holds to the self in the second sense of the word, calls up in using the word a mental complex like that which represents to him a "real" not-self, there is all the more reason why we should not expect to find anything in his thought which would suggest a new kind of sameness within the sphere of the "real" self. It remains, of course, to notice here, as in the case of the noumenal self, that any sense of the word same which has reference not so much to the things under discussion as to the relations of these things to other things, may, if self and not-self differ as to these relations, be applicable to the one and not to the other. Thus Sense VI may be regarded as inapplicable to the "real" self. I will discuss this point more fully in a few moments. With this one exception we may, therefore, I think, apply the kinds of sameness enumerated under Sec. 9 as obtaining in the sphere of "external" things to the "real" self also, and it would seem that no new kinds are to be added. It is unnecessary to repeat here the classification already given.
Sec. 14.We come finally to the self as a something immediately perceived, the self as phenomenon or idea. I do not mean to use these names in a question-begging way, and I will try to exhaust all reasonable possibilities in discussing it and its samenesses.
Now, whatever the self is, it would seem that it must be, inso far as it is a thing immediately known, either a part or the whole of consciousness, or one or the other of these regarded in some peculiar aspect or relation.
If it be a part of consciousness, recognized as distinct from another part, the non-ego, we may reasonably maintain:
1. That the perceived self is at any moment what it is—is the same with itself. The question whether it be simple and unanalyzable does not affect the problem. This is sameness in sense I.
2. That if it be simple and unanalyzable, this simple element of consciousness may be the same at two different times, and if complex, two elements or two complexes of elements, belonging to different times may be the same. This is sameness in sense II.
3. That if we regard the self as an object having a life-history, as consisting of successive elements united in a series as sense elements are united in the series which is for us a material object (immediately known), we may speak of its being the same on two successive days, even though it exhibit dissimilar qualities, primary reference being had not to likeness of elements, but to the experience which has been described at length in discussing sense III.
4. That we may speak of two selves, of two elements of two selves (if selves be complex), or of two elements of one self (if one self may contain two such elements), as at any one time the same, to indicate that they are similar. This is sameness in sense IV. It should be kept in mind, however, that we never look upon one consciousness as containing two selves as it contains one self, or as it may contain two material objects (immediately known). The second self in mind is recognized as present only as an imagined object. Nevertheless it would seem quite proper to use the word same to mark this relation of similarity between the perceived self and an imagined self, just as we useit to mark a likeness of two material objects, or of one material object and the memory image of such an object.
5. That we may speak of the self and its representative as the same. The memory image of a later time may stand for the self as experienced at an earlier. Unless it be claimed that yesterday's consciousness of self is actually to-day's consciousness, one must admit that the self remembered is the self known through its proxy. And one may in his reasonings about the self use as a symbol the pronoun "I," paying little attention as he goes along to what it stands for, and yet knowing it may serve in place of the obscure something it represents. These are instances of sameness in sense V.
6. That we never use the word same in sense VI in speaking of the self as we do in speaking of the not-self. We do not say two men perceive the same self as we say they perceive the same tree or house. The familiar distinction between the subjective and the objective marks out the latter as in a sense, peculiar to itself, common and impersonal.
I have already shown what we have in mind when we say two men see the same material thing. We have a picture of the thing, and of the bodies of the two men in a certain relation to it; and we imagine a copy of the thing as in some way connected with each of these bodies, and due to its relation to the thing. When relations to a material object are in question all the bodies in a consciousness are on a par. We may directly perceive the one thing and two or more bodies holding similar relations to it. But it is not so in the case of selves. The one self that we find in each consciousness seems to be peculiarly related to one body to the exclusion of others. And as we have not, in the case of this self, the conditions which led us to mark the similar relations of two human bodies (our representatives of the men) to one material object, by saying two men see the same thing, we, ofcourse, do not say that two men see the same self. The word same, in sense VI, we may regard, then, as inapplicable to the self as immediately known.[28]This appears to be due, however, not to the nature of this self in itself considered, but to its peculiar relation to the other things in a consciousness.
Moreover, since the other two selves, the self as group of "real" qualities and the self as noumenon, are to us, as it were, shadows cast by the self immediately known—assumed to exist only because this is known to exist, and thought of as "present" only because this is known to be present—since, I say, these two selves hold in our thought this peculiar relation of dependence upon the self in consciousness, it is to be expected that we never find any one speaking of two men as seeing the same "real" self as one might readily speak of two men as seeing the same "real" tree. One says he has evidence that two men see the same "real" tree, when he has or can have in consciousness an immediately perceived tree and two immediately perceived human bodies in a certain relation to it. If no one had ever had this experience in the sphere of the immediately known, we have no reason to think any one would ever have thought of applying the phrase in question to a tree mediately known. And as we do not have a similar experience touching the self in consciousness, it is only natural to find that no one applies the phrase to any self out of consciousness. When things differ their shadows ought to differ too. Sameness in sense VI we may regard, then, as not attributable to self in any of the three senses of the word.
7. That, finally, there seems no more reason why one should not call the self as immediately known the same with the self as"external" thing, or with the self as noumenon, than the not-self as similarly perceived the same with the not-self as similarly inferred. The supposed relationships are in the two cases exactly alike. Here we have sameness in sense VII.
Sec. 15.If we claim that by the self as immediately known we understand not a part but the whole of consciousness, we should seem, unless we in some way modify our statement, to obliterate the distinction between self and not-self. Still, taking the words simply, and assuming that we mean by self all that is immediately known, we do not find that this will necessitate any important difference in the discussion of its samenesses. Consciousness as a whole is certainly what it is, or the same with itself, at any instant: two elements in it belonging to different times, or two complexes of elements belonging to different times may be the same, as being alike; it may be regarded as having a life history, and may from this point of view be called the same at different times without regard to similarity; two simultaneous elements or complexes of elements in it may be called the same to mark the fact that they resemble each other, or it, as a whole, may for the same reason be called the same with another consciousness (imagined); it and its representative (for example, the memory-image of its former self), may be called the same; and we may use the word same to indicate its relation to its supposed "real" correlate in an extra-consciousness world, whether we make this "thing" or "noumenon."