e two phrases in talking first about '_M_'s relation to _L_' and
then again about '_M_'s relation to _N_,' we must be having, or must
have had, two distinct perceptions;--and the rest would then seem to
follow duly. But the starting-point of the reasoning here seems to be
the fact of the two _phrases_; and this suggests that the argument
may be merely verbal. Can it be that the whole dialectic achievement
consists in attributing to the experience talked-about a constitution
similar to that of the language in which we describe it? Must we
assert the objective doubleness of the _M_ merely because we have to
name it twice over when we name its two relations?

Candidly, I can think of no other reason than this for the dialectic
conclusion![1] for, if we think, not of our words, but of any simple
concrete matter which they may be held to signify, the experience
itself belies the paradox asserted. We use indeed two separate
concepts in analyzing our object, but we know them all the while to be
but substitutional, and that the _M_ in _L--M_ and the _M_ in _M--N_
_mean_ (_i.e._, are capable of leading to and terminating in) one
self-same piece, _M_, of sensible experience. This persistent identity
of certain units, or emphases, or points, or objects, or members--call
them what you will--of the experience-continuum, is just one of
those conjunctive features of it, on which I am obliged to insist so
emphatically. For samenesses are parts of experience's indefeasible
structure. When I hear a bell-stroke and, as life flows on, its
after-image dies away, I still hark back to it as 'that same

[Footnote 1: Technically, it seems classable as a 'fallacy of
composition.' A duality, predicable of the two wholes, _L--M_ and
_M--N_, is forthwith predicated of one of their parts, _M_.]

bell-stroke.' When I see a thing _M_, with _L_ to the left of it and
_N_ to the right of it, I see it _as_ one _M_; and if you tell me I
have had to 'take' it twice, I reply that if I 'took' it a thousand
times, I should still _see_ it as a unit.[1] Its unity is aboriginal,
just as the multiplicity of my successive takings is aboriginal. It
comes unbroken as _that M_, as a singular which I encounter; they come
broken, as _those_ takings, as my plurality of operations. The unity
and the separateness are strictly co-ordinate. I do not easily fathom
why my opponents should find the separateness so much more easily
understandable that they must needs infect th