certainly nothing else could make them so. But if of themselves they are continuous, their continuity is ideal, and the same thing holds mutatis mutandis of every kind of identity.
II. All identity then is qualitative in the sense that it all must consist in content and character. There is no sameness of mere existence, for mere existence is a vicious abstraction. And everywhere identity is ideal and consists in the transcendence of its own being by that which is identical. And in its main principle and in its essence identity is everywhere one and the same, though it differs as it appears in and between different kinds of diversities. And on account of these diversities to deny the existence of a fundamental underlying principle appears to me to be irrational. But I would repeat that in my opinion the variety cannot be shown as internally developed from the principle, and even to attempt to set it out otherwise systematically is more than I can undertake. It may however perhaps assist the reader if I add some remarks on temporal, and spatial, and again on numerical identity, matters where there reigns, I venture to think, a good deal of prejudice.
There is a disposition on the ground of such facts as space and time to deny the existence of any one fundamental principle of identity. And this disposition is hard to combat since it usually fails to found itself upon any distinct principle. A tacit alternative may be assumed between ‘existence’ and ‘quality,’ and on this may rest the assertion that some sameness belongs to mere existence, and falls therefore under a wholly alien principle. But because not all identity is between qualities in one sense of that term, it does not follow that any identity can fail to be qualitative in a broader sense, and thus the whole alternative disappears. The question in short whether one can really have distinction without difference, or difference without diversity in character, does not seem to have been considered.
Now we have just seen that space and time exemplify in their characters the one principle of identity, since all their parts are self-transcendent and are only themselves by making a whole. And I will once more point out that, apart from distinctions which, I presume, we must call qualitative, space and time do not exist. In mere space or mere time there are no distinctions nor any possibility of finding them. Without up and down, right and left, incoming and outgoing, space and time disappear; and it seems to me that these distinctions must be called qualitative. And surely again time and space are real only in limited spaces and durations. But what is it which limits and so makes a space or a time, except that it ends here and not somewhere else, and what does that mean except that its quality goes to a certain point and then ceases by becoming another quality? There is absolutely no meaning in “one time” unless it is the time of one somewhat, and any time that is the time of one somewhat is so far
