But if it be allowed that the disparity between consciousness and matter must be either a distinction between two kinds of reality, or else the distinction between being and not-being, the predicament just described is worse for the critic of the “double aspect” theory than for its advocate. If the distinction is that of being and not-being, whichever is not-being has an internal constitution and structure by virtue of which parts and relations are recognized within it: matter has physical laws and the interaction of bodies; consciousness has interrelated states. Not-being, so interpreted, is hardly distinguished from being. And if the distinction is within being, and exhausts it, either the connotation of consciousness and that of matter are referable to each other--expressible in terms of each other--or else the distinction is only denotative, and they are not distinguished as _different_; for difference is a discursive relation between differents: _dif_fering from each other is a case of _re_ferring to each other. Excessive emphasis on the “ultimateness” and “absoluteness” of the difference between these two concepts is just the inductive cue that results in the “double aspect” theory. No one can regard consciousness as not different from matter--least of all our critic, who finds them incommensurable. Nay, among real things that are _other_ than each other, experience gives us no fellow to such difference; for difference so utter, they that differ should coincide. And so, in the fact of aspect, we have, indeed, in a thousand forms, disparity that matches the difference between the concepts now before us: _e. g._, right, left; up, down; plus, minus; convex, concave. We confess three obvious differences between the two equations which we have taken to represent our critic’s conception of the relation of convexity to concavity and the relation of consciousness to matter. In equation (1), which is _m_ = -(-_m_), representing the former relation, the same symbol _m_ stands on both sides; in equation (2) the symbols are different, _x_ on one side, _y_ on the other. In (1) the coefficient also is the same on both sides, namely unity; in (2) the coefficients are different, unity on one side, _a_ on the other. And in (1) the signs are opposite on the two sides, while in (2) the sign is the same on both sides.