What Descartes is feeling for in this is sameness in sense third. When we use the words "a bit of wax," we do not have in mind a single experience. The wax in a solid and the wax in a liquid state is to us the same wax. I have pointed out what the word same, so used, means. It means that these two experiences are recognized as belonging to the one group or series of experiences; and the wax, completely known, is the sum total of the series. Descartes saw very well that the two experiences under discussion are not strictly identical (the same in sense first), and he saw also that they are very unlike. He naturally asked, In what then are they the same? or, what is there that is here the same? And, instead of accepting the fact that such a sameness as this cannot be reduced to one of the others, he solved the problem by passing from the experiences, the "hats and cloaks," to a "real" thing underlying. In other words, to explain the sameness of two experiences of a bit of wax, sameness in sense third, he assumed "real" wax, which is the same with the experiences which represent it only in sense seventh. This real wax, or something in it, he supposes to remain the same on two occasions. It is this to which he makes the mind refer when it calls the wax the same. But when a man advances statements about a bit of wax, his information rests ultimately upon his experiences, if it be grounded at all. From the experience one infers the "real" thing, and not _vice versa_. No one knew this better than Descartes, with his fundamental principle of the certainty of consciousness and the uncertainty of what is "external." He got his "real" world by a process of reasoning, and put it in a realm wholly cut off from direct observation. This being the case, one cannot but wonder at his inconsistency in the present instance. Is one to remain in doubt whether a piece of wax felt to be hard, and then melted before the fire, is the same, until one has had some means of discovering that the same "real" wax is present on the two occasions? How is one to find out whether "real" wax is ever present unless he infer its presence from some experience? And how is one to know that the same "real" wax is present on two occasions unless he infer it from the fact that what is directly perceived on the two occasions is the same in some sense of the word? Whatever sameness there is rests ultimately for its evidence upon the experiences. There is nothing else to judge from. The reasoning, which would base the sameness of what is experienced upon the sameness of a corresponding "real" thing, when the sameness of this latter is to be inferred from the former, reminds one of the stupid argument, still occasionally met with, which would infer a God from data of consciousness, and then found a belief in the veracity of consciousness upon the goodness of God. One may believe, if one please, that, when we have two distinct experiences so connected that we call