inferred the reality of diverse existences, beings in any case several and finite, and without community of essence.[1] But this conclusion, as we have seen, is wholly untenable. For plurality and separateness themselves exist only by means of relations (Chapter iii.). To be different from another is to have already transcended one’s own being; and all finite existence is thus incurably relative and ideal. Its quality falls, more or less, outside its particular “thatness”; and, whether as the same or again as diverse, it is equally made what it is by community with others. Finite elements are joined by what divides, and are divided by what joins them, and their division and their junction alike are ideal. But, if so, and unless some answer is found to this contention, it is impossible to deny that identity is a fact.[2] It is not real ultimately, we are agreed, but then facts themselves are not ultimate, and the question is confined to the realm of phenomenal existence. For difference itself is but phenomenal, and is itself assuredly not ultimate. And we may end, I think, with this reply. Show us (we may urge) a region of facts which are neither different nor yet the same; show us how quality without relation, or how mere being, can differentiate; point out how difference is to keep any meaning, as soon as sameness is wholly banished; tell us the way in which sameness and difference can exist, if they may not be ideal; explain how, if identity is not real, the world of experience in any part holds together—at least attempt this, or else admit that identity is ideal and is, at the same time, a fact, and that your objection, in
- ↑ The English writers who have objected to identity have left their principle of atomism and their principle of relativity simply standing side by side. Not one has (so far as I know) made the smallest attempt seriously to explain the position given to relations. Cp. Principles of Logic, p. 96.
- ↑ Fact in the sense of unseparated adjective of fact. See above, p. 317.
