But another famous Butler—Samuel Butler, the author of Hudibras—went farther than this, and maintained that identities were the highest attainment of metaphysics itself. At the beginning of the first Canto of Hudibras, in the description of Hudibras himself, Butler wrote:
He knew what’s what, and that’s as high
As metaphysic wit can fly.
I once conducted what I imagined to be an æsthetic investigation for the purpose of discovery, by the continual use of the word “Why?”[23] the grounds upon which certain people choose to put milk into a tea-cup before the tea. I was surprised to discover that it was an ethical, and not an æsthetic problem; for I soon elicited the fact that it was done because it was “right.” A continuance of my patient questioning elicited further evidence of the fundamental character of the principle of identity in ethics; for it was right, I learned, because “right is right.”
It appears that some people unconsciously think that the principle of identity is the foundation, in certain religions, of the reasons which can be alleged for moral conduct, and are surprised when this fact is pointed out to them. The late Sir Leslie Stephen, when travelling by railway, fell into conversation with an officer of the Salvation Army, who tried hard to convert him. Failing in this laudable endeavour, the Salvationist at last remarked: “But if you aren’t saved, you can’t go to heaven!” “That, my friend,” replied Stephen, “is an identical proposition.”
[22] Cambridge, 1903.
[23] Cf. P. E., p. 2.