But if these two questions are unanswerable, then we seem driven to the conclusion that things are but appearances. And I will add a few remarks, not so much in support of this conclusion as in order to make it possibly more plain.
I will come to the point at once. For a thing to exist it must possess identity; and identity seems a possession with a character at best doubtful. If it is merely ideal, the thing itself can hardly be real. First, then, let us inquire if a thing can exist without identity. To ask this question is at once to answer it; unless, indeed, a thing is to exist, and is to hold its diversity combined in an unity, somehow quite outside of time. And this seems untenable. A thing, if it is to be called such, must occupy some duration beyond the present moment, and hence succession is essential. The thing, to be at all, must be the same after a change, and the change must, to some extent, be predicated of the thing. If you suppose a case so simple as the movement of an atom, that is enough for our purpose. For, if this “thing” does not move, there is no motion. But, if it moves, then succession is predicated of it, and the thing is a bond of identity in differences. And, further, this identity is ideal, since it consists in the content, or in the “what we are able to say of the thing.” For raise the doubt at the end of our atom’s process, if the atom is the same. The question raised cannot be answered without an appeal to its character. It is different in one respect—namely, the change of place; but in another respect—that of its own character—it remains the same. And this respect is obviously identical content. Or, if any one objects that an atom has no content, let him throughout substitute the word “body,” and settle with himself how, without any qualitative difference (such as right and left), he distinguishes atoms. And this identical content is called ideal because it transcends given existence. Existence
