F. H. Bradley

“ To avoid confusion between what may be called individual sameness and mere identity of character, we should of course all agree, is most desirable. But the idea that you will avoid a mistake by making an error, that you will prevent a confusion between different kinds of identity by altogether denying one kind, seems to me to be irrational. The identity that you deny will in practice come back always. It may return in a form genuine but disguised, obscured and distorted by the deceptive title of exact likeness. ”

“ Each part of space or time as against any other part is a repellent unit, and this its unity, and internal identity, is taken to lie merely in its ‘existence.’ But apparently here it is forgotten that the exclusiveness depends on the whole. It is only because it is in ‘this’ series that the ‘this’ is unique, and, if so, the ‘this,’ as we have seen, is not merely exclusive but has a self-transcendent character. So that, if there were really but one series of space or of time, and if in this way uniqueness were absolute, I cannot perceive how that could found an objection against identity. ”

“ There are various forms of identity in diversity, not logically derivable from one another, and yet all instances and developments of one underlying principle. The idea that mere ‘existence’ could be anything, or could make anything the same or different, seems a sheer superstition. All is not quality in the special sense of quality, but all is quality in the sense of content and character. ”

“ Here first we find a reality which is beyond a mere ‘what’; but neither here nor anywhere can we find a reality which is merely ‘that.’ To make reality these two aspects must be united inseparably, and indeed their separation is appearance itself. So that if the question ‘Is all identity qualitative’ means ‘Is every sameness that of qualities proper,’ we must answer it in the negative. But in any other sense our answer to the question must be affirmative. For we must repel the suggestion of a sameness which is not that of content and which consists in an identity of mere existence. ”

“ It is so always, we must reply, in this sense that it involves the self-transcendence of that which is identical. Where there is no diversity there is no identity at all, the identity in abstraction from the diversity having lost its character. But, on the other hand, where the diversity is not of itself the same, but is only taken so or made so from the outside, once more identity has vanished. Sameness, in short, cannot be external merely ”

“ Likeness may mean my specific experience of resemblance—and that of course itself is not identity—or it may mean the real partial sameness in character of two things whether to me they resemble or not. Thus ‘exact likeness’ can be used for the identical character which makes the point of likeness, and it need not mean the mere likeness which can be opposed to identity. And where exact likeness does not mean the identical character, bankruptcy at once is patent. ”

“ The fact of non-temporal and non-spatial diversity in unity seems at least to exist. The distinctions which I can base on this diversity have, to me at least, in some cases no discoverable character of time or space. And the question is whether the temporal (or, if you will, the spatial) form, which we will take as necessary for distinction in its origin, must essentially qualify it. Is it not possible that, however first got, the form of distinction may become at least in some cases able to exist through and be based on a simpler and non-temporal scheme of diversity in unity? ”

“ And I do not think that the history of philosophy can exhibit a grosser case of this very confusion against which we who believe in identity are so specially warned. Yes, you may try to drive out nature, and nature (as the saying goes) will always come back, but it will not always come back as nature. And you may strive to banish identity of character, and identity always will return, and it will not always return in a tolerable form. ”

“ What, let us ask, is a breach in the continuous existence of a thing? It does not lie in mere ‘existence,’ for that is nothing at all; and it cannot again be spatial or temporal merely, for a breach there is impossible. A time, for instance, if really broken, would not be a broken time, but would have become two series with no temporal relation, and therefore with no breach. A breach therefore is but relative, and it involves an unbroken whole in which it takes place. For a temporal breach, that is, you must have first one continuous duration. ”

“ And, as we have seen, if quality is restricted to that which is the term of a relation, then at any stage before distinction obviously you will have no quality. The unity of a felt whole, for example, which is certainly an identity, will as certainly not be qualitative, nor will there be qualitative sameness ever between what is felt and then later perceived. ”

“ There is a disposition on the ground of such facts as space and time to deny the existence of any one fundamental principle of identity. And this disposition is hard to combat since it usually fails to found itself upon any distinct principle. A tacit alternative may be assumed between ‘existence’ and ‘quality,’ and on this may rest the assertion that some sameness belongs to mere existence, and falls therefore under a wholly alien principle. ”

“ How mere resemblance without identity is to qualify the terms that resemble, is a problem which is not faced, and yet unsolved it threatens ruin. The use of this mere resemblance leads us in psychology to entertain gross and useless fictions, and in logic it entails immediate and irretrievable bankruptcy. ”

“ And obviously, as it seems to me, the objector to identity advances nothing new, when he brings forward the continuity of a thing in space or in time. The idea I presume is, as before, that in space or time we have a form of identity in difference which is in no sense an identity of character, but consists merely of ‘existence,’ and that a thing is qualified by being placed externally in this form. ”

“ But if of themselves they are continuous, their continuity is ideal, and the same thing holds mutatis mutandis of every kind of identity.
II. All identity then is qualitative in the sense that it all must consist in content and character. There is no sameness of mere existence, for mere existence is a vicious abstraction. And everywhere identity is ideal and consists in the transcendence of its own being by that which is identical. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the identity in time of an existing thing (as in this work I have mentioned) you require both temporal continuity and again sameness in the thing’s proper character. And mutatis mutandis what is true here about temporal continuity is true also about spatial, and not to perceive this would be an error. Now whether a wholly unbroken continuity in time or space is requisite for the singleness of a thing, is a question I here pass by; [6] but some unbroken duration obviously is wanted if there is to be duration at all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is this ambiguity of ‘likeness’ which gave its plausibility to J. S. Mill’s doctrine of reasoning from particular to particular, and it is this again which has enabled Mr. Hobhouse (pp. 280-5) to represent that Mill’s doctrine, once held to be original and revolutionary, consists really in the view that you never do proceed direct from particular to particular, but always through a universal. The task that still awaits Mr. Hobhouse is the proof that, when Mill talked of Association by Similarity, he always meant nothing whatever but Redintegration through identity. ”

“ But because not all identity is between qualities in one sense of that term, it does not follow that any identity can fail to be qualitative in a broader sense, and thus the whole alternative disappears. ”

“ And apart from a restriction the whole question about identity would cover the entire field of metaphysics. Wherever there is a unity of the manifold, there is an identity in diversity, and a study of the principal forms of unity in difference would not leave much outside it. ”

“ But, as we saw, the whole question is in part one of words, ‘quality’ being a term which is ambiguous. In its lowest meaning it applies to anything that in any sense qualifies and makes anything to be somewhat. It therefore will cover everything except the Universe taken as such. ”

“ 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. ”