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,[1] 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.[2] 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,[3] 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.[4]
- ↑ See p. 348 and the Note thereto.
- ↑ I observe that Mr. Hobhouse appears (p. 109) to endorse this objection, but he makes no attempt, so far as I see, to explain or justify it. And as he also appears not to be prepared to deny that sameness always underlies resemblance, his position here and in some other points is to me quite obscure.
- ↑ p. 348 and Note.
- ↑ Whether Mr. Hobhouse is to be taken again as endorsing this objection I am quite unable to say. The argument, on p. 112 of his book, I to my regret have not been able to follow, and it would be unprofitable to criticise it in a sense which it probably may not bear. But I have been able to find nothing that looks like an attempt to deal with the real issue involved here. Can you have degrees which are degrees of nothing, and can you have a resemblance where there is no point of resemblance? The apparent contention that because relations of quantity and degree do not consist in bare identity, they therefore must consist in mere resemblance without any identity, I cannot comprehend. Why are we forced to accept either? But I must not attempt to criticise where I have failed to understand.
