that abstracts from and disregards any special difference. It may be called the residual aspect of distinctness without regard for its ‘what’ and ‘how.’ Whether the underlying difference is temporal, spatial, or something else, is wholly ignored so long as it distinguishes. And, wherever I can so distinguish, I can as a matter of fact count, and am possessed of units. Units proper doubtless do not exist apart from the experience of quantity, and I do not mean to say that apart from quantity no distinction is possible, or again that quantity could be developed rationally from anything more simple than itself. And I have emphasized the words ‘as a matter of fact’ in order to leave these questions on one side, since they can be neglected provisionally. Numerical sameness, in the same way, is the persistence of any such bare distinction through diverse contexts, no matter what these contexts are. And of course it follows that, so long as and so far as sameness and difference are merely numerical, they are not spatial or temporal, nor again in any restricted sense are they qualitative.
But then ensues a problem which to me, rightly or wrongly, seems an extremely hard one. In fact my difficulty with regard to it has led me to avoid talking about numerical sameness. I have preferred rather to appear as one of those persons (I do not think that we can be many) who are not aware of or who at least practically cannot apply this familiar distinction. And my difficulty is briefly this. Without difference in character there can be no distinction, and the opposite would seem to be nonsense. But then what in the end is that difference of character which is sufficient to constitute numerical distinction? I do not mean by this, What in the end is the relation of difference to distinction? But, setting that general question here on one side, I ask, In order for distinction to exist, what kind or kinds of diversity in character must be presupposed? Or again we may put what is more or less the same question thus, What and of what sort is the minimum of diversity required for numerical difference and sameness, these being taken in the widest sense? And to this question I cannot return a satisfactory answer.
It is easy of course to reply that all distinction is at bottom temporal, or again that all is spatial, or again perhaps that all is both. And I am very far from suggesting that such views are irrational and indefensible. As long as they do not make a vicious abstraction of space and time from quality, or attempt to set up space and time as forms of ‘existence’ and not of character, there is nothing irrational in such views. But whether they are right or wrong, in either case to me they are useless, while they remain assertions which take no account of my difficulties. And the main difficulty to me is this. In feeling I find as a fact wholes of diversity in unity, and about some of these wholes I can discover nothing temporal or spatial. In this I may
