74. The process of self-contradiction, by which a ‘creation of the mind’ finds its way into the real or given, must also appear in a contradictory conception of the real itself. Kept pure of all that Locke reckons intellectual fiction, it can be nothing but a simple chaos of individual units: only by the superinduction of relation can there be sameness, or continuity of existence, in the minutest of these for successive moments. Locke presents it arbitrarily under the conception of mere individuality or of continuity, according as its distinction from the work of the mind, or its intelligible content, happens to be before him. A like see-saw in his account of the individuality and generality of ideas has already been noticed. [1] In his discussion of identity the contradiction is partly disguised by a confusion between mere unity on the one hand, and sameness or unity in difference, on the other. Thus, after starting with an account of identity as belonging to ideas which are the same _at different times_, he goes on to speak of a thing as the same with itself, _at a single instant_. So, too, by the _principium individuationis_, he understands ‘existence itself, which determines a being of any sort to a particular time and place.’ As it is clear from the context that by the _principium individuationis_ he meant the source of identity or sameness, it will follow that by ‘sameness’ he understood singleness of a thing in a single time and place. Whence then the plurality, without which ‘sameness’ is unmeaning? In fact, Locke, having excluded it in his definition, covertly brings it back again in his instance, which is that of ‘an atom, _i.e._ a continued body under one immutable superficies, existing in a determined time and place.’ This, ‘considered in any instant of its existence, is in that instant the same with itself.’ But it is so because--and, if we suppose the consideration of plurality of _times_ excluded, only because--it is a ‘_continued_’ body, which implies, though its place be determined, that it exists _in a plurality of parts of space_. Either this plurality, or that of instants of its existence, must be recognised in contrast with the unity of body, if this unity is to become ‘sameness with itself.’ In adding that not only at the supposed instant is the atom the same, but ‘so must continue as long as its existence continues,’ Locke shows that he really thought of the identical body under a plurality of times _ex parte post_, if not _ex parte ante_. [1] See above, paragraphs 43, and the following. Feelings are the real, and do not admit of identity. How then can identity be real?