sy, in taking a
concrete example to fix one's ideas by, to choose one in which the
letter _M_ should stand for a collective noun of some sort, which noun,
being related to _L_ by one of its parts and to _N_ by another, would
inwardly be two things when it stood outwardly in both relations. Thus,
one might say: 'David Hume, who weighed so many stone by his body,
influences posterity by his doctrine.' The body and the doctrine are two
things, between which our finite minds can discover no real sameness,
though the same name covers both of them. And then, one might continue:
'Only an Absolute is capable of uniting such a non-identity.' We must, I
say, avoid this sort of example, for the dialectic insight, if true at
all, must apply to terms and relations universally. It must be true of
abstract units as well as of nouns collective; and if we prove it by
concrete examples we must take the simplest, so as to avoid irrelevant
material suggestions.

Taken thus in all its generality, the absolutist contention seems to use
as its major premise Hume's notion 'that all our distinct perceptions
are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real
connexion among distinct existences.'[46] Undoubtedly, since we use two
phrases in talking first about '_M_'s relation to _L_' and then about
'_M_'s relation to _N_,' we must be having, or must have had, two
distinct perceptions;--and the rest would then seem to follow duly. But
the starting-point of the reasoning here seems to be the fact of the two
_phrases_; and this suggests that the argument may be merely verbal. Can
it be that the whole dialectic consists in attributing to the experience
talked-about a constitution similar to that of the language in which we
describe it? Must we assert the objective double-ness of the _M_ merely
because we have to name it twice over when we name its two relations?

Candidly, I can think of no other reason than this for the dialectic
conclusion;[47] for, if we think, not of our words, but of any simple
concrete matter which they may be held to signify, the experience itself
belies the paradox asserted. We use indeed two separate concepts in
analyzing our object, but we know them all the while to be but
substitutional, and that the _M_ in _L--M_ and the _M_ in _M--N mean_
(_i.e._, are capable of leading to and terminating in) one self-same
piece, _M_, of sensible experience. This persistent identity of certain
units (or emphases, or poi