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.' Undoubtedly, since we use two phrases in talking first about '_M_'s relation to _L_' and then again 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 achievement 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 doubleness 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![1] 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 points, or objects, or members--call them what you will--of the experience-continuum, is just one of those conjunctive features of it, on which I am obliged to insist so emphatically. For samenesses are parts of experience's indefeasible structure. When I hear a bell-stroke and, as life flows on, its after-image dies away, I still hark back to it as 'that same [Footnote 1: Technically, it seems classable as a 'fallacy of composition.' A duality, predicable of the two wholes, _L--M_ and _M--N_, is forthwith predicated of one of their parts, _M_.]