Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/93

Rh PSYCHOLOGY 81 Jlerial icltity. al idltity "The one so like the other As could not be distinguished but by names " had the same complexion and the same stature just as we say they had the same mother. This ambiguity in the word " same," whereby it means either individual identity or indistinguishable resemblance, has been often noticed, and from a logical or objective point of view justly com- plained of as " engendering fallacies in otherwise enlight- ened understandings." But apparently no one has in- quired into its psychological basis, although more than one writer has admitted that the ambiguity is one "in itself not always to be avoided." 1 It is not enough to trace the confusion to jthe existence of common names and to cite the forgotten controversies of scholastic realism. We are not now concerned with the conformity of thought to things or with logical analysis, but with the analysis of a psychological process. The tendency to treat presenta- tions as if they were copies of things the objective bias, as we may call it is the one grand obstacle to psycho- logical observation. Some only realize with an effort that the idea of extension is not extended ; no wonder, then, if it should seem " unnatural " to maintain that the idea of two like things does not consist of two like ideas. But, assum- ing that both meanings of identity have a psychological justification, it will be well to distinguish them and to ex- amine their connexion. Perhaps we might term the one "material identity" and the other " individual identity," following the analogy of expressions such as " different things but all made of the same stuff," " the same person but entirely changed." Thus there is unity and plurality concerned in both, and herein identity or sameness differs from singularity or mere oneness, which entails no relation. But the unity and the plurality are different in each, and each is in some sort the converse of the other. In the one, two different individuals partially coincide ; in the other, one individual is partially different ; the unity in the one case is an individual presentation, in the other is the presentation of an individual. In material identity the unity is that of a single pre- sentation, whether simple or complex, which enters as a common constituent into two or more others. It may be possible of course to individualize it, but as it emerges in a comparison it is a single presentation and nothing more. On account of this absence of individual marks this single presentation is what logicians call "abstract"; but this is not psychologically essential. It may be a generic image which has resulted from the neutralization of individual marks, but it may equally well be a simple presentation, like red, to which such marks never belonged. We come here from a new side upon a truth which has been already expounded at length, viz., that presentations are not given to us as individuals but as changes in a continuum. Time and space the instruments, as it were, of individualiza- tion, which are presupposed in the objective sciences are psychologically later than this mere differentiation. The many vexed questions that arise concerning indi- vidual identity are metaphysical rather than psychological. But it will serve to bring out the difference between the two forms of identity to note that an identification cannot be established solely by qualitative comparison ; an alibi or a breach of temporal continuity will turn the flank of the strongest argument from resemblance. Moreover, resem- blance itself may be fatal to identification when the law of being is change. But, while temporal and spatial de- terminations are essential to individual identity, they have, strictly speaking, no individual identity of their own. When we speak of two impressions occurring at the same 1 Comp. J. S. Mill, Logic, bk. i. ch. iii. 11, and Examination of Hamilton,,^ ed.,cli. xiv. p. 306, note; also Meinong, "Hume-Studien " II., Wiener Sitzungberichte (Phil. Hist. CL), vol. ci. p. 709. time, or localize or project them into the same place, a careful analysis shows only that we detect no difference of temporal and local signs respectively, in other words, have only special cases of comparison. As regards the real categories, it may be said generally Real that these owe their origin in large measure to the an- cat ?- thropomorphic or mythical tendency of human thought, ones - TO o/xoiov T<j) 6/xoiw yiKiKr/cetr^ai. Into the formation of these conceptions two very distinct factors enter (1) the facts of what in the stricter sense we call " self -conscious- ness," and (2) certain spatial and temporal relations among our presentations themselves. On the one hand, it has to be noted that these spatial and temporal relations are but the occasion or motive and ultimately perhaps, we may say, the warrant for the analogical attribution to things of selfness, efficiency, and design, but are not directly the source of the forms of thought that tius arise. On the other hand, it is to be noted also that such forms, although they have an independent source, would never apart from suitable material come into actual existence. If the followers of Hume err in their exclusive reliance upon " associations naturally and even necessarily generated by the order of our sensations " (J. S. Mill), the disciple of Kant errs also who relies exclusively on "the synthetic unity of apperception." The truth is that we are on the verge of error in thus sharply distinguishing the two at all ; if we do so momentarily for the purpose of exposition it behoves us here again to remember that mind grows and is not made. The use of terms like " innate," " a priori," " necessary," " formal," &c., without further quali- fication leads only too easily to the mistaken notion that all the mental facts so named are alike underived and original, independent not only of experience but of each other ; whereas but for the forms of intuition the forms of thought would be impossible, that is to say, we should never have a self-consciousness at all if we had not pre- viously learnt to distinguish occupied and unoccupied space, past and present in time, and the like. But, again, it is equally true that, if we could not feel and move as well as receive impressions, and if experience did not repeat it- self, we should never attain even to this level of spatial and temporal intuition. Kant shows a very lame and halting recognition of this dependence of the higher forms on the lower both in his schematism of the categories, and again in correcting in his Analytic the opposition of sense and under- standing as respectively receptive and active with which he set out in his ^Esthetic. Still, although what are called the subjective and objective factors of real knowledge ad- vance together, the former is in a sense always a step ahead. We find again without us the permanence, individuality, efficiency, and adaptation we have found first of all within (comp. p. 56, b and d). But such primitive imputation of personality, though it facilitates a first understanding, soon proves itself faulty and begets the contradictions which have been one chief motive to philosophy. We smile at the savage who thinks a magnet must need food and is puzzled that the horses in a picture remain for ever still ; but few consider that underlying all common-sense thinking there lurks the same natural precipitancy. We attribute to extended things a unity which we know only as the unity of an unextended subject ; we attribute to changes among these extended things what we know only when we act and suffer ourselves ; and we attribute further both to them and their changes a striving for ends which we know only because we feel. In asking what they are, how they act, and why they are thus and thus, we assimi- late them to ourselves, in spite of the differences which lead us by and by to see a gulf between mind and matter. Such instinctive analogies have, like other analogies, to be confirmed, refuted, or modified by further knowledge, t.f., XX. ii