The word “same” is often used in a way that leads to error. Persons say “the same” when they mean similar. It has been asked whether the ship Argo, in which Jason sought the Golden Fleece, and whose decaying timbers, as she lay on the Greek shore, a grateful and reverent nation had patched up, till, in process of time, not a plank of the original ship was left, was still “the same” ship as of old. The question presents no difficulty, if we remember that “sameness,” that is “identity,” is an absolute term, and can be affirmed or denied only in an absolute sense. No man is the same man to-day that he was yesterday, though he may be very similar to his yesterday’s self.
A common source of confusion in language is what logicians call “amphibolous” sentences,--that is, sentences that are equivocal, not from a double sense in any word, but because they admit of a double construction. Quintilian mentions several cases where litigation arose from this kind of ambiguity in the wording of a will. In one case a testator expressed a wish that a statue should be erected, and used the following language: _poni statuam auream hastam in manu tenentem_. The question arose whether it was the statue, or the spear only, that was to be of gold. It is well known that punctuation was unknown to the Greeks and Romans; and hence the ancient oracles were able to deliver responses, which, written down by the priests and delivered to the inquirers, were adapted, through the ambiguity thus caused, to save the credit of the oracle, whether the expected event was favorable or unfavorable. An example of this is the famous response, _Aio te Æacida Romanos vincere posse_; which may mean either, “Thou, Pyrrhus, I say, shalt subdue the Romans;” or, “I say, Pyrrhus, that the Romans shall subdue thee.” A better illustration is the remarkable response which was given when an oracle was consulted regarding the success of a certain military expedition: _Ibis et redibis nunquam peribis in bello_, which, not being punctuated, might have been translated either: “Thou shalt go, and shalt never return, thou shalt perish in battle;” or, “Thou shalt go and return, thou shalt never perish in battle.” We have an example of amphibolous sentences in English in the witch prophecy, “The Duke yet lives that Henry shall depose,” and in the words cited by Whately from the Nicene Creed, “by whom all things were made,” which are grammatically referable either to the Father or to the Son.