identity (sameness) of two distinct things. It differs from identity in its lowest form—the identity, that is, where things are taken as the same without specific awareness of the point of sameness and distinction of that from the diversity—because it implies the distinct consciousness that the two things are two and different. It differs again from identity in a more explicit form, because it is of the essence of Resemblance that the point or points of sameness should remain at least partly undistinguished and unspecified. And further there is a special feeling which belongs to and helps to constitute the experience of similarity, a feeling which does not belong to the experience of sameness proper. On the other hand resemblance is based always on partial sameness; and without this partial sameness, which in its own undistinguishing way it perceives, there is no experience of resemblance, and without this to speak of resemblance is meaningless. And it is because of this partial identity, which is the condition of our experiencing resemblance and which resemblance asserts, that we are able within certain limits to use ‘same’ for ‘like,’ and to use ‘like’ for ‘same.’ But the specific feeling of resemblance is not itself the partial identity which it involves, and partial identity need not imply likeness proper at all.[1] But without partial identity, both as its condition and as its assertion, similarity is nothing.
From a logical point of view, therefore, resemblance is secondary, but this does not mean that its specific experience can be resolved into identity or explained by it. And it does not mean that, when by analysis you specify the point of sameness in a resemblance, the resemblance must vanish. Things are not made so simply as this. So far as you have analyzed, so far the resemblance (proper) is gone, and is succeeded so far by a perception of identity—but only so far. By the side of this new perception, and so far as that does not extend, the same experience of resemblance may still remain. And from this to argue that resemblance is not based on sameness is to my mind the strangest want of understanding. And again it is indifferent whether the experience of identity or that of resemblance is prior in time and psychologically. I am myself clear that identity in its lowest sense comes first; but the whole question is for our present purpose irrelevant. The question here is whether resemblance is or is not from a logical point of view secondary, whether it is not always based on identity, while identity need not in any sense be based on it.
I will now proceed to consider some objections that seem raised against this view, and will then go on to ask, supposing we deny it, in what position we are left. The first part of this task I shall treat very briefly for two reasons. Some of the
