them two perceptions of the same wax, there is in some way connected with them a bit of "real" wax which remains in some sense the same. But one should never suppose that any given experienced wax is proved the same by reference to this. It is judged the same upon observation. Descartes then was inconsistent with his own principles when he made this jump to a new sphere of being. The sameness of the experienced object is ultimate; the only pertinent question is, what does it mean? It means, as I have said, that the wax hard and the wax soft are the same in sense third. But sameness in sense third admits of wide dissimilarities in the experiences it unites into the notion of the one object. Descartes looked for a sameness without these dissimilarities. He would reduce sense third to sense first, or, perhaps, to sense second. To do this he must go behind the experiences to a "real" thing, which is to remain the same as a proxy for what is evidently variable. This makeshift is only satisfactory to one who overlooks, or allows to fall into the background, the plain fact that representative and thing represented are two separate things and not to be confused; that is, who confuses sameness in sense first with sameness in sense seventh. Descartes distinguished carefully between ideas and external things, but he sometimes overlooked the distinction. "But what is this bit of wax that cannot be comprehended save by the understanding or the mind? It is certainly the same that I see, that I touch, that I imagine; it is, in a word, the same that I have always thought it from the beginning." How ambiguous! is it the same in sense first or sense seventh? The sentence following would indicate sense seventh, but the spirit of the whole discussion would argue for sense first. One must delude oneself into believing that one can get at "real" wax directly, in some way or other, or one cannot think of making it an ultimate ground of reasoning. Descartes, like so many others, would seem to have vibrated between a clear consciousness that ideas and "real" things are distinct, belonging to different worlds, and a confused belief that they belong to the one world, and that "real" things are open to direct observation. I shall take still another extract from this author. It contains similar errors.