The indivisibility of existence and identity might be taken as "common sense." Yet an uncommon subtlety is sometimes required to defend such notions against the more sophisticated attacks of many intellectuals. In their eagerness to dissect language—undermining the unity of "it is" by separating the meaning of "it" from the meaning of "is"—they are apt to lose contact with the reality of which language speaks, much as one might destroy the life of an organism by a similar dissection.