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[ Pg 459 ] CHAPTER XII . CONCEPTION . THE SENSE OF SAMENESS . In Chapter VIII , p . 221 , the distinction was drawn between two kinds of knowledge of things , bare acquaintance with them and knowledge about them . The possibility of two such knowledges depends on a fundamental psychical peculiarity which may be entitled " the principle of constancy in the mind's meanings " and which may be thus expressed : " The same matters can be thought of in successive portions of the mental stream , and some of these portions can know that they mean the same matters which the other portions meant . " One might put it otherwise by saying that " the mind can always intend , and know when it intends , to think of the Same . " This sense of sameness is the very keel and backbone of our thinking . We saw in Chapter X how the consciousness of personal identity reposed on it , the present thought finding in its memories a warmth and intimacy which it recognizes as the same warmth and intimacy it now feels . This sense of identity of the knowing subject is held by some philosophers to be the only vehicle by which the world hangs together . It seems hardly necessary to say that a sense of identity of the known object would perform exactly the same unifying function , even if the sense of subjective identity were lost . And without the intention to think of the same outer things over and over again , and the sense that we were doing so , our sense of our own personal sameness would carry us but a little way towards making a universe of our experience . Note , however , that we are in the first instance speaking of the sense of sameness from the point of view of the mind's structure alone , and not from the point of view of the universe . We are psychologizing , not philosophizing , [ Pg 460 ] That is , we do not care whether there be any real sameness in things or not , or whether the mind be true or false in its assumptions of it . Our principle only lays it down that the mind makes continual use of the notion of sameness , and if deprived of it , would have a different structure from what it has . In a word , the principle that the mind can mean the Same is true of its meanings , but not necessarily of aught besides . [ 386 ] The mind must conceive as possible that the Same should be before it , for our experience to be the sort of thing it is .
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