In some cases able to exist through and be based on a

simpler and non-temporal scheme of diversity in unity?

This strikes me as a difficult issue, and I do not

pretend here to decide it, and I think it calls for a

more careful enquiry than many persons seem inclined to

bestow on it. And this is all

that I think it well to say on numerical identity.

But on the main question, to return to that, I do not

end in doubt. There are various forms of identity in

diversity, not logically derivable from one another, and

yet all instances and developments of one underlying

principle. The idea that mere "existence" could be

anything, or could make anything the same or different,

seems a sheer superstition. All is not quality in the

special sense of quality, but all is quality in the

sense of content and character. The search for a "that"

other than a "what" is the pursuit of a phantasm which

recedes the more the more you approach it. But even this

phantasm is the illusory show of a truth. For in the

Absolute there is no "what" divorced from and re-seeking

its "that," but both these aspects are inseparable.

III. I think it right to add here some remarks on

Resemblance, though on this point I have little or

nothing new to say. Resemblance or Similarity or

Likeness, in the strict sense of the term, I take to be

the perception of the more or less unspecified

identity (sameness) of two distinct things. It differs

from identity in its lowest form--the identity, that is,

where things are taken as the same without specific

awareness of the point of sameness and distinction of

that from the diversity--because it implies the distinct

consciousness that the two things are two and different.

It differs again from identity in a more explicit form,

because it is of the essence of Resemblance that the

point or points of sameness should remain at least

partly undistinguished and unspecified. And further

there is a special feeling which belongs to and helps to

constitute the experience of similarity, a feeling which

does not belong to the experience of sameness proper. On

the other hand resemblance is based always on partial

sameness; and without this partial sameness, which in

its own undistinguishing way it perceives, there is no

experience of resemblance, and without this to speak of

resemblance is meaningless. And it is because of this

partial identity, which is the condition of our

experiencing resemblance and which resemblance asserts,

that we are able within certain limits to use "same" for

"like," and to use "like" for "same." But the specific

feeling of resemblance is not itself the partial

identity which it involves, and partial identity need

not imply likeness proper at all. But

without partial identity, both as its condition and as

its assertion, similarity is nothing.

From a logical point of view, therefore, resemblance

is secondary, but this does not mean that its specific

experience can be resolved into identity or explained by

it. And it does not mean that, when by analysis you

specify the point of sameness in a resemblance, the

resemblance must vanish. Things are not made so simply

as this. So far as you have analyzed, so far the

resemblance (proper) is gone, and is succeeded so far by

a perception of identity--but only so far. By the side

of this new perception, and so far as that does not

extend, the same experience of resemblance may still

remain. And from this to argue that resemblance is not

based on sameness is to my mind the strangest want of

understanding. And again it is indifferent whether the

experience of identity or that of resemblance is prior

in time and psychologically. I am myself clear that

identity in its lowest sense comes first; but the whole

question is for our present purpose irrelevant. The

question here is whether resemblance is or is not from a

logical point of view secondary, whether it is not

always based on identity, while identity need not in any

sense be based on it.

I will now proceed to consider some objections that

seem raised against this view, and will then go on to

ask, supposing we deny it, in what position we are left.

The first part of this task I shall treat very briefly

for two reasons. Some of the objections I must

regard as disposed of, and others remain to me obscure.

The metaphysical objection against the possibility of

any identity in quality may, I think, be left to itself;

and I will pass to two others which seem to rest on

misunderstanding. We are told, "You cannot say that two

things, which are like, are the same, unless in each you

are prepared to produce and to exhibit the point of

sameness." I have answered this objection already, and will merely here

repeat the main point. I want to know whether it is

denied that, before analysis takes place, there can be

any diverse aspects of things, and whether it is

asserted that analysis always makes what it brings out,

or whether again (for some reason not given) one must so

believe in the power of analysis as to hold that what it

cannot bring out naked is therefore nothing at all, or

whether again, for some unstated reason, one is to

accept this not as a general principle, but only where

sameness is concerned. When I know what I have to meet I

will endeavour to meet it, but otherwise I am

helpless. And

another objection, which I will now notice, remains also

unexplained. The perception of a series of degrees, it

seems to be contended, is a fact which proves that there

may be resemblance without a basis of identity. I have

tried to meet this argument in various forms, so far as I have been able to

understand them, and I will add here that I have pressed

in vain for any explanation on the cardinal point. Can

you, I would repeat, have a series of degrees which are

degrees of nothing, and otherwise have you not admitted

an underlying identity? And if I am asked, Cannot there

be degrees in resemblance? I answer that of course there

can be. But, if so, and in this case, the resemblance

itself is the point of identity of and in which there

are degrees, and how that is to show either that there

is no identity at all, or again that no identity

underlies the resemblance, I cannot conjecture. I admit,

or rather I urge and insist, that the perception of a

series is a point as difficult as in psychology it is

both important and too often neglected. But on the other

side I insist that by denying identity you preclude all

possibility of explaining this fact, and have begun by

turning the fact into inexplicable nonsense. And no one,

I would add, can fairly be expected to answer an

objection the meaning of which is not stated.

Passing from this point let us ask what is

the alterative to identity. If we deny sameness in

character and assert mere resemblance, with what are we

left? We are left, it seems to me, in confusion, and end

with sheer nonsense. How mere resemblance without

identity is to qualify the terms that resemble, is a

problem which is not faced, and yet unsolved it

threatens ruin. The use of this mere resemblance leads

us in psychology to entertain gross and useless

fictions, and in logic it entails immediate and

irretrievable bankruptcy. If the same in character does

not mean the same, our inferences are destroyed and cut

in sunder, and in brief the world of our knowledge is

dissolved.

And how is this bankruptcy veiled? How is it that

those who deny sameness in character can in logic, and

wherever they find it convenient, speak of terms as "the

same," and mention "their identity," and talk of "one

note" and "one colour?" The expedient used is the idea

or the phrase of "exact likeness" or "precise

similarity." When resemblance is carried to such a point

that perceptible difference ceases, then, I understand,

you have not really got sameness or identity, but you

can speak as if you had got it. And in this way the

collision with language and logic is avoided or rather

hidden.

What in principle is the objection to this use of

"exact likeness"? The objection is that resemblance, if

and so far as you make it "exact" by removing all