SEC. 12. With respect to the third sense, which makes it refer to the "substance" of Locke or the "noumenon" of other writers: all the difficulties which arise out of the endeavor to attribute sameness of any kind to any substance or noumenon obtain here also. But it seems on the surface more glaringly inconsistent in the adherent of noumena to discriminate between different kinds as admitting of differences of treatment than it does for him to suppose them capable of treatment at all. Things that differ cannot be conceived as differing except in qualities, and here there is question not of qualities but of noumena. If one is to retain any appearance of consistency, he must not maintain that the word same is applicable in any given sense to certain noumena and not to others. If he does so, he openly abandons his noumena to a phenomenal fate. And, as a matter of fact, I think it is plain that those believers in noumena, who distinguish them from one another, yet think of them in just the one way. If we take the utterances of a good representative of the class, Sir William Hamilton, we may see that although he distinguishes between the noumenal ego and the noumenal non-ego, not only do his clearest statements make such a distinction out of the question, but the distinction drawn is so vague and insignificant[25] that the two noumena may be thought of and reasoned about in the one way. Phenomena being abstracted, what was in his mind when he spoke of the one was probably in no respect different from what was in his mind when he spoke of the other. In so far, then, as the noumena themselves are concerned, it would seem that any kind of sameness which we may predicate of the noumenal not-self we may predicate on the same ground and with equal justice of the noumenal self, and _vice versa_. If, however, any sense of the word same marks a relation between a noumenon and some other thing or things, and if the two noumena differ as respects this relation, then this kind of sameness may be attributed to the one and not to the other. It may be claimed that we indicate just such a relation in using the word same in Sense VI; and that, whatever one might do, one would under no circumstances speak of two men as perceiving the same self, noumenal or any other. I shall discuss this point when I come to discuss the sameness of self as phenomenon. [25] Lectures on Metaphysics, VIII, N. Y., 1880, p. 97. I may add here that when one obliterates the distinction between noumena by plunging them into the darkness of the "unknowable," there can, of course, be no question of a new sense of the word same in the field I am discussing. On the general question of noumenal sameness, all that it seems to me necessary to say I have said before.