sense.
Words must have an identical reference to things.

Incidentally in discussing the Axiom of Contradiction ([Greek:
axioma tes antiphaseos]),[4] Aristotle lays down what is now known
as the Law of Excluded Middle. Of two contradictories one or other
must be true: we must either affirm or deny any one thing of any
other: no mean or middle is possible.

In their origin, then, these so-called Laws of Thought were simply the
first principles of Dialectic and Demonstration. Consecutive argument,
coherent ratiocination, is impossible unless they are taken for
granted.

If we divorce or abstract them from their original application, and
consider them merely as laws of thinking or of being, any abstract
expression, or illustration, or designation of them may easily be
pushed into antagonism with other plain truths or first principles
equally rudimentary. Without entering into the perplexing and
voluminous discussion to which these laws have been subjected by
logicians within the last hundred years, a little casuistry is
necessary to enable the student to understand within what limits they
hold good.

_Socrates is Socrates._ The name Socrates is a name for something to
which you and I refer when we use the name. Unless we have the same
reference, we cannot hold any argument about the thing, or make any
communication one to another about it.

But if we take _Socrates is Socrates_ to mean that, "An object of
thought or thing is identical with itself," "An object of thought or
thing cannot be other than itself," and call this a law of thought, we
are met at once by a difficulty. Thought, properly speaking, does
not begin till we pass beyond the identity of an object with itself.
Thought begins only when we recognise the likeness between one object
and others. To keep within the self-identity of the object is to
suspend thought. "Socrates was a native of Attica," "Socrates was
a wise man," "Socrates was put to death as a troubler of the
commonweal"--whenever we begin to think or say anything about
Socrates, to ascribe any attributes to him, we pass out of his
self-identity into his relations of likeness with other men, into what
he has in common with other men.

Hegelians express this plain truth with paradoxical point when they
say: "Of any definite existence or thought, therefore, it may be said
with quite as much truth that it _is not_, as that it _is_, its own
bare self".[5] Or, "A thing must other itself in orde