r to be itself".
Controversialists treat this as a subversion of the laws of Identity
and Contradiction. But it is only Hegel's fun--his paradoxical way of
putting the plain truth that any object has more in common with other
objects than it has peculiar to itself. Till we enter into those
aspects of agreement with other objects, we cannot truly be said to
think at all. If we say merely that a thing is itself, we may as well
say nothing about it. To lay down this is not to subvert the Law of
Identity, but to keep it from being pushed to the extreme of appearing
to deny the Law of Likeness, which is the foundation of all the
characters, attributes, or qualities of things in our thoughts.

That self-same objects are like other self-same objects, is an
assumption distinct from the Law of Identity, and any interpretation
of it that excludes this assumption is to be repudiated. But does not
the law of Identity as well as the law of the likeness of mutually
exclusive identities presuppose that there are objects self-same,
like others, and different from others? Certainly: this is one of the
presuppositions of Logic.[6] We assume that the world of which we talk
and reason is separated into such objects in our thoughts. We assume
that such words as _Socrates_ represent individual objects with a
self-same being or substance; that such words as _wisdom_, _humour_,
_ugliness_, _running_, _sitting_, _here_, _there_, represent
attributes, qualities, characters or predicates of individuals; that
such words as _man_ represent groups or classes of individuals.

Some logicians in expressing the Law of Identity have their eye
specially upon the objects signified by general names or abstract
names, _man_, _education_.[7] "A concept is identical with the sum
of its characters," or, "Classes are identical with the sum of
the individuals composing them". The assumptions thus expressed in
technical language which will hereafter be explained are undoubtedly
assumptions that Logic makes: but since they are statements of the
internal constitution of some of the identities that words represent,
to call them the Law of Identity is to depart confusingly from
traditional usage.[8]

That throughout any logical process a word must signify the same
object, is one proposition: that the object signified by a general
name is identical with the sum of the individuals to each of whom it
is applicable, or with the sum of the characters that they bear in