Volume 8: Reviews, Correspondence, and Bibliography.
Book 1: Reviews
Chapter 1: John Venn, The Logic of Chance (Ed.) Review of John Venn's The Logic of Chance, An Essay on the Foundations and Province of the Theory of Probability, with especial Reference to its Application to Moral and Social Science (London and Cambridge, 1866), The North American Review 105 (July 1867) 317-321. This is Peirce's earliest full statement of his theory of probability; cf. 3.19 (1867). His later views are discussed in [CP] II, Book III, and [CP] VII, Book II. †1
1. Here is a book which should be read by every thinking man. Great changes have taken place of late years in the philosophy of chances. Mr. Venn remarks, with great ingenuity and penetration, that this doctrine has had its realistic, conceptualistic, and nominalistic stages. The logic of the Middle Ages is almost coextensive with demonstrative logic; but our age of science opened with a discussion of probable argument (in the Novum Organum), and this part of the subject has given the chief interest to modern studies of logic. What is called the doctrine of chances is, to be sure, but a small part of this field of inquiry; but it is a part where the varieties in the conceptions of probability have been most evident. When this doctrine was first studied, probability seems to have been regarded as something inhering in the singular events, so that it was possible for Bernouilli to enounce it as a theorem (and not merely as an identical proposition), that events happen with frequencies proportional to their probabilities. That was a realistic view. Afterwards it was said that probability does not exist in the singular events, but consists in the degree of credence which ought to be reposed in the occurrence of an event. This is conceptualistic. Finally, probability is regarded as the ratio of the number of events in a certain part of an aggregate of them to the number in the whole aggregate. This is the nominalistic view.
2. This last is the position of Mr. Venn and of the most advanced writers on the subject. The theory was perhaps first put forth by Mr. Stuart Mill; but his head became involved in clouds, and he relapsed into the conceptualistic opinion. Yet the arguments upon the modern side are overwhelming. The question is by no means one of words; but if we were to inquire into the manner in which the terms probable, likely, and so forth, have been used, we should find that they always refer to a determination of a genus of argument. See, for example, Locke on the Understanding, Book IV. ch. 14, §1. There we find it stated that a thing is probable when it is supported by reasons such as lead to a true conclusion. These words such as plainly refer to a genus of argument. Now, what constitutes the validity of a genus of argument? The necessity of thinking the conclusion, say the conceptualists. But a madman may be under a necessity of thinking fallaciously, and (as Bacon suggests) all mankind may be mad after one uniform fashion. Hence the nominalist answers the question thus: A genus of argument is valid when from true premises it will yield a true conclusion — invariably if demonstrative, generally if probable. The conceptualist says, that probability is the degree of credence which ought to be placed in the occurrence of an event. Here is an allusion to an entry on the debtor side of man's ledger. What is this entry? What is the meaning of this ought? Since probability is not an affair of morals, the ought must refer to an alternative to be avoided. Now the reasoner has nothing to fear but error. Probability will accordingly be the degree of credence which it is necessary to repose in a proposition in order to escape error. Conceptualists have not undertaken to say what is meant by "degree of credence." They would probably pronounce it indefinable and indescribable. Their philosophy deals much with the indefinable and indescribable. But propositions are either absolutely true or absolutely false. There is nothing in the facts which corresponds at all to a degree of credence, except that a genus of argument may yield a certain proportion of true conclusions from true premises. Thus, the following form of argument would, in the long run, yield (from true premises) a true conclusion two thirds of the time:—
A is taken at random from among the B's;
2/3 of the B's are C;
∴ A is C.
3. Truth being, then, the agreement of a representation with its object, and there being nothing in re answering to a degree of credence, a modification of a judgment in that respect cannot make it more true, although it may indicate the proportion of such judgments which are true in the long run. That is, indeed, the precise and only use or significance of these fractions termed probabilities: they give security in the long run. Now, in order that the degree of credence should correspond to any truth in the long run, it must be the representation of a general statistical fact, — a real, objective fact. And then, as it is the fact which is said to be probable, and not the belief, the introduction of "degree of credence" at all into the definition of probability is as superfluous as the introduction of a reflection upon a mental process into any other definition would be, — as though we were to define man as "that which (if the essence of the name is to be apprehended) ought to be conceived as a rational animal."
4. To say that the conceptualistic and nominalistic theories are both true at once, is mere ignorance, because their numerical results conflict. A conceptualist might hesitate, perhaps, to say that the probability of a proposition of which he knows absolutely nothing is 1/2, although this would be, in one sense, justifiable for the nominalist, inasmuch as one half of all possible propositions (being contradictions of the other half) are true; but he does not hesitate to assume events to be equally probable when he does not know anything about their probabilities, and this is for the nominalist an utterly unwarrantable procedure. A probability is a statistical fact, and cannot be assumed arbitrarily. Boole first did away with this absurdity, and thereby brought the mathematical doctrine of probabilities into harmony with the modern logical doctrine of probable inference. But Boole (owing to the needs of his calculus) admitted the assumption that simple events whose probabilities are given are independent, — an assumption of the same vicious character. Mr. Venn strikes down this last remnant of conceptualism with a very vigorous hand.
5. He has, however, fallen into some conceptualistic errors of his own; and these are specially manifest in his "applications to moral and social science." The most important of these is contained in the chapter "on the credibility of extraordinary stories"; but it is defended with so much ingenuity as almost to give it the value of a real contribution to science. It is maintained that the credibility of an extraordinary story depends either entirely upon the veracity of the witness, or, in more extraordinary cases, entirely upon the a priori credibility of the story; but that these considerations cannot, under any circumstances, be combined, unless arbitrarily. In order to support this opinion, the author invents an illustration. He supposes that statistics were to have shown that nine out of ten consumptives who go to the island of Madeira live through the first year, and that nine out of ten Englishmen who go to the same island die the first year; what, then, would be the just rate of insurance for the first year of a consumptive Englishman who is about to go to that island? There are no certain data for the least approximation to the proportion of consumptive Englishmen who die in Madeira during the first year. But it is certain that an insurance company which insured only Englishmen in Madeira during the first year, or only consumptives under the same circumstances, would be warranted (a certain moral fact being neglected) in taking the consumptive Englishman at its ordinary rate. Hence, Mr. Venn thinks that an insurance company which insured all sorts of men could with safety and fairness insure the consumptive Englishman either as Englishman or as consumptive. This is an error. For supposing every man to be insured for the same amount, which we may take as our unit of value, and adopting the notation, (c,e) =number of consumptive Englishmen insured. (c,ē) = " " consumptives not English insured. (c̄,e) =" " not consumptive English insured. x = unknown ratio of consumptive English who do not die in the first year. The amount paid out yearly by the company would be, in the long run, 1/10(c,ē) + 9/10(c̄,e) + x(c,e), and x is unknown. This objection to Venn's theory may, however, be waived. †2 Now, the case of an extraordinary story is parallel to this: for such a story is, 1st, told by a certain person, who tells a known proportion of true stories, — say nine out of ten; and, 2d, is of a certain sort (as a fish story), of which a known proportion are true, — say one in ten. Then, as much as before, we come out right, in the long run, by considering such a story under either of the two classes to which it belongs. Hence, says Mr. Venn, we must repose such belief in the story as the veracity of the witness alone, or the antecedent probability alone, requires, or else arbitrarily modify one or other of these degrees of credence. In examining this theory, let us first remark, that there are two principal phrases in which the word probability occurs: for, first, we may speak of the probability of an event or proposition, and then we express ourselves incompletely, inasmuch as we refer to the frequency of true conclusions in the genus of arguments by which the event or proposition in question may have been inferred, without indicating what genus of argument that is; and, secondly, we may speak of the probability that any individual of a certain class has a certain character, when we mean the ratio of the number of those of that class that have that character to the total number in the class. Now it is this latter phrase which we use when we speak of the probability that a story of a certain sort, told by a certain man, is true. And since there is nothing in the data to show what this ratio is, the probability in question is unknown. But a "degree of credence" or "credibility," to be logically determined, must, as we have seen, be an expression of probability in the nominalistic sense; and therefore this "degree of credence" (supposing it to exist) is unknown. "We know not what to believe," is the ordinary and logically correct expression in such cases of perplexity.
6. Credence and expectation cannot be represented by single numbers. Probability is not always known; and then the probability of each degree of probability must enter into the credence. Perhaps this again is not known; then there will be a probability of each degree of probability of each degree of probability; and so on. In the same way, when a risk is run, the expectation is composed of the probabilities of each possible issue, but is not a single number, as the Petersburg problem shows. Suppose the capitalists of the world were to owe me a hundred dollars, and were to offer to pay in either of the following ways: 1st, a coin should be pitched up until it turned up heads (or else a hundred times, if it did not come up heads sooner), and I should be paid two dollars if the head came up the first time, four if the second time, eight if the third time, etc.; or, 2d, a coin should be turned up a hundred times, and I should receive two dollars for every head. Each of these offers would be worth a hundred dollars, in the long run; that is to say, if repeated often enough, I should receive on the average a hundred dollars at each trial. But if the trial were to be made but once, I should infinitely prefer the second alternative, on account of its greater security. Mere certainty is worth a great deal. We wish to know our fate. How much it is worth is a question of political economy. It must go into the market, where its worth is what it will fetch. And since security may be of many kinds (according to the distribution of the probabilities of each sum of money and of each loss, in prospect), the value of the various kinds will fluctuate among one another with the ratio of demand and supply, — the demand varying with the moral and intellectual state of the community, — and thus no single and constant number can represent the value of any kind.
Chapter 2: Fraser's Edition of The Works of George Berkeley (Ed.) Review of Alexander Campbell Fraser's The Works of George Berkeley, D.D., formerly Bishop of Cloyne: including many of his Writings hitherto unpublished, four volumes (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1871), The North American Review 113 (Oct. 1871) 449-472. Cf. Peirce's review of the 1901 edition, [Bibliography] N-1901-10. †1
§1. Introduction
7. This new edition of Berkeley's works is much superior to any of the former ones. It contains some writings not in any of the other editions, and the rest are given with a more carefully edited text. The editor has done his work well. The introductions to the several pieces contain analyses of their contents which will be found of the greatest service to the reader. On the other hand, the explanatory notes which disfigure every page seem to us altogether unnecessary and useless.
8. Berkeley's metaphysical theories have at first sight an air of paradox and levity very unbecoming to a bishop. He denies the existence of matter, our ability to see distance, and the possibility of forming the simplest general conception; while he admits the existence of Platonic ideas; and argues the whole with a cleverness which every reader admits, but which few are convinced by. His disciples seem to think the present moment a favorable one for obtaining for their philosophy a more patient hearing than it has yet got. It is true that we of this day are sceptical and not given to metaphysics, but so, say they, was the generation which Berkeley addressed, and for which his style was chosen; while it is hoped that the spirit of calm and thorough inquiry which is now, for once, almost the fashion, will save the theory from the perverse misrepresentations which formerly assailed it, and lead to a fair examination of the arguments which, in the minds of his sectators, put the truth of it beyond all doubt. But above all, it is anticipated that the Berkeleyan treatment of that question of the validity of human knowledge and of the inductive process of science, which is now so much studied, is such as to command the attention of scientific men to the idealistic system. To us these hopes seem vain. The truth is that the minds from whom the spirit of the age emanates have now no interest in the only problems that metaphysics ever pretended to solve. The abstract acknowledgment of God, Freedom, and Immortality, apart from those other religious beliefs (which cannot possibly rest on metaphysical grounds) which alone may animate this, is now seen to have no practical consequence whatever. The world is getting to think of these creatures of metaphysics, as Aristotle of the Platonic ideas: {teretismata gar esti, kai ei estin, ouden pros ton logon estin}. The question of the grounds of the validity of induction has, it is true, excited an interest, and may continue to do so (though the argument is now become too difficult for popular apprehension); but whatever interest it has had has been due to a hope that the solution of it would afford the basis for sure and useful maxims concerning the logic of induction, — a hope which would be destroyed so soon as it were shown that the question was a purely metaphysical one. This is the prevalent feeling, among advanced minds. It may not be just; but it exists. And its existence is an effectual bar (if there were no other) to the general acceptance of Berkeley's system. The few who do now care for metaphysics are not of that bold order of minds who delight to hold a position so unsheltered by the prejudices of common sense as that of the good bishop.
9. As a matter of history, however, philosophy must always be interesting. It is the best representative of the mental development of each age. It is so even of ours, if we think what really is our philosophy. Metaphysical history is one of the chief branches of history, and ought to be expounded side by side with the history of society, of government, and of war; for in its relations with these we trace the significance of events for the human mind. The history of philosophy in the British Isles is a subject possessing more unity and entirety within itself than has usually been recognized in it. The influence of Descartes was never so great in England as that of traditional conceptions, and we can trace a continuity between modern and mediaeval thought there, which is wanting in the history of France, and still more, if possible, in that of Germany.
10. From very early times, it has been the chief intellectual characteristic of the English to wish to effect everything by the plainest and directest means, without unnecessary contrivance. In war, for example, they rely more than any other people in Europe upon sheer hardihood, and rather despise military science. The main peculiarities of their system of law arise from the fact that every evil has been rectified as it became intolerable, without any thoroughgoing measure. The bill for legalizing marriage with a deceased wife's sister is yearly pressed because it supplies a remedy for an inconvenience actually felt; but nobody has proposed a bill to legalize marriage with a deceased husband's brother. In philosophy, this national tendency appears as a strong preference for the simplest theories, and a resistance to any complication of the theory as long as there is the least possibility that the facts can be explained in the simpler way. And, accordingly, British philosophers have always desired to weed out of philosophy all conceptions which could not be made perfectly definite and easily intelligible, and have shown strong nominalistic tendencies since the time of Edward I., or even earlier. Berkeley is an admirable illustration of this national character, as well as of that strange union of nominalism with Platonism, which has repeatedly appeared in history, and has been such a stumbling-block to the historians of philosophy.
11. The mediaeval metaphysic is so entirely forgotten, and has so close a historic connection with modern English philosophy, and so much bearing upon the truth of Berkeley's doctrine, that we may perhaps be pardoned a few pages on the nature of the celebrated controversy concerning universals. And first let us set down a few dates. It was at the very end of the eleventh century that the dispute concerning nominalism and realism, which had existed in a vague way before, began to attain extraordinary proportions. During the twelfth century it was the matter of most interest to logicians, when William of Champeaux, Abélard, John of Salisbury, Gilbert de la Porrée, and many others, defended as many different opinions. But there was no historic connection between this controversy and those of scholasticism proper, the scholasticism of Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockam. For about the end of the twelfth century a great revolution of thought took place in Europe. What the influences were which produced it requires new historical researches to say. No doubt, it was partly due to the Crusades. But a great awakening of intelligence did take place at that time. It requires, it is true, some examination to distinguish this particular movement from a general awakening which had begun a century earlier, and had been growing ever since. But now there was an accelerated impulse. Commerce was attaining new importance, and was inventing some of her chief conveniences and safeguards. Law, which had hitherto been utterly barbaric, began to be a profession. The civil law was adopted in Europe, the canon law was digested; the common law took some form. The Church, under Innocent III., was assuming the sublime functions of a moderator over kings. And those orders of mendicant friars were established, two of which did so much for the development of the scholastic philosophy. Art felt the spirit of a new age, and there could hardly be a greater change than from the highly ornate round-arched architecture of the twelfth century to the comparatively simple Gothic of the thirteenth. Indeed, if any one wishes to know what a scholastic commentary is like, and what the tone of thought in it is, he has only to contemplate a Gothic cathedral. The first quality of either is a religious devotion, truly heroic. One feels that the men who did these works did really believe in religion as we believe in nothing. We cannot easily understand how Thomas Aquinas can speculate so much on the nature of angels, and whether ten thousand of them could dance on a needle's point. But it was simply because he held them for real. If they are real, why are they not more interesting than the bewildering varieties of insects which naturalists study; or why should the orbits of double stars attract more attention than spiritual intelligences? It will be said that we have no means of knowing anything about them. But that is on a par with censuring the schoolmen for referring questions to the authority of the Bible and of the Church. If they really believed in their religion, as they did, what better could they do? And if they found in these authorities testimony concerning angels, how could they avoid admitting it. Indeed, objections of this sort only make it appear still more clearly how much those were the ages of faith. And if the spirit was not altogether admirable, it is only because faith itself has its faults as a foundation for the intellectual character. The men of that time did fully believe and did think that, for the sake of giving themselves up absolutely to their great task of building or of writing, it was well worth while to resign all the joys of life. Think of the spirit in which Duns Scotus must have worked, who wrote his thirteen volumes in folio, in a style as condensed as the most condensed parts of Aristotle, before the age of thirty-four. Nothing is more striking in either of the great intellectual products of that age, than the complete absence of self-conceit on the part of the artist or philosopher. That anything of value can be added to his sacred and catholic work by its having the smack of individuality about it, is what he has never conceived. His work is not designed to embody his ideas, but the universal truth; there will not be one thing in it however minute, for which you will not find that he has his authority; and whatever originality emerges is of that inborn kind which so saturates a man that he cannot himself perceive it. The individual feels his own worthlessness in comparison with his task, and does not dare to introduce his vanity into the doing of it. Then there is no machine-work, no unthinking repetition about the thing. Every part is worked out for itself as a separate problem, no matter how analogous it may be in general to another part. And no matter how small and hidden a detail may be, it has been conscientiously studied, as though it were intended for the eye of God. Allied to this character is a detestation of antithesis or the studied balancing of one thing against another, and of a too geometrical grouping, — a hatred of posing which is as much a moral trait as the others. Finally, there is nothing in which the scholastic philosophy and the Gothic architecture resemble one another more than in the gradually increasing sense of immensity which impresses the mind of the student as he learns to appreciate the real dimensions and cost of each. It is very unfortunate that the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries should, under the name of Middle Ages, be confounded with others, which they are in every respect as unlike as the Renaissance is from modern times. In the history of logic, the break between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is so great that only one author of the former age is ever quoted in the latter. If this is to be attributed to the fuller acquaintance with the works of Aristotle, to what, we would ask, is this profounder study itself to be attributed, since it is now known that the knowledge of those works was not imported from the Arabs? The thirteenth century was realistic, but the question concerning universals was not as much agitated as several others. Until about the end of the century, scholasticism was somewhat vague, immature, and unconscious of its own power. Its greatest glory was in the first half of the fourteenth century. Then Duns Scotus, Died 1308. †2 a Briton (for whether Scotch, Irish, or English is disputed), first stated the realistic position consistently, and developed it with great fulness and applied it to all the different questions which depend upon it. His theory of "formalities" was the subtlest, except perhaps Hegel's logic, ever broached, and he was separated from nominalism only by the division of a hair. It is not therefore surprising that the nominalistic position was soon adopted by several writers, especially by the celebrated William of Ockam, who took the lead of this party by the thoroughgoing and masterly way in which he treated the theory and combined it with a then rather recent but now forgotten addition to the doctrine of logical terms. With Ockam, who died in 1347, scholasticism may be said to have culminated. After him the scholastic philosophy showed a tendency to separate itself from the religious element which alone could dignify it, and sunk first into extreme formalism and fancifulness, and then into the merited contempt of all men; just as the Gothic architecture had a very similar fate, at about the same time, and for much the same reasons.
§2. Formulation of Realism
12. The current explanations of the realist-nominalist controversy are equally false and unintelligible. They are said to be derived ultimately from Bayle's Dictionary; at any rate, they are not based on a study of the authors. "Few, very few, for a hundred years past," says Hallam, with truth, "have broken the repose of the immense works of the schoolmen." Yet it is perfectly possible so to state the matter that no one shall fail to comprehend what the question was, and how there might be two opinions about it. Are universals real? We have only to stop and consider a moment what was meant by the word real, when the whole issue soon becomes apparent. Objects are divided into figments, dreams, etc., on the one hand, and realities on the other. The former are those which exist only inasmuch as you or I or some man imagines them; the latter are those which have an existence independent of your mind or mine or that of any number of persons. The real is that which is not whatever we happen to think it, but is unaffected by what we may think of it. (Ed.) Cf. 5.311. †3 The question, therefore, is whether man, horse, and other names of natural classes, correspond with anything which all men, or all horses, really have in common, independent of our thought, or whether these classes are constituted simply by a likeness in the way in which our minds are affected by individual objects which have in themselves no resemblance or relationship whatsoever. Now that this is a real question which different minds will naturally answer in opposite ways, becomes clear when we think that there are two widely separated points of view, from which reality, as just defined, may be regarded. Where is the real, the thing independent of how we think it, to be found? There must be such a thing, for we find our opinions constrained; there is something, therefore, which influences our thoughts, and is not created by them. We have, it is true, nothing immediately present to us but thoughts. These thoughts, however, have been caused by sensations, and those sensations are constrained by something out of the mind. This thing out of the mind, which directly influences sensation, and through sensation thought, because it is out of the mind, is independent of how we think it, and is, in short, the real. Here is one view of reality, a very familiar one. And from this point of view it is clear that the nominalistic answer must be given to the question concerning universals. For, while from this standpoint it may be admitted to be true as a rough statement that one man is like another, the exact sense being that the realities external to the mind produce sensations which may be embraced under one conception, yet it can by no means be admitted that the two real men have really anything in common, for to say that they are both men is only to say that the one mental term or thought-sign "man" stands indifferently for either of the sensible objects caused by the two external realities; so that not even the two sensations have in themselves anything in common, and far less is it to be inferred that the external realities have. This conception of reality is so familiar, that it is unnecessary to dwell upon it; but the other, or realist conception, if less familiar, is even more natural and obvious. All human thought and opinion contains an arbitrary, accidental element, dependent on the limitations in circumstances, power, and bent of the individual; an element of error, in short. But human opinion universally tends in the long run to a definite form, which is the truth. Let any human being have enough information and exert enough thought upon any question, and the result will be that he will arrive at a certain definite conclusion, which is the same that any other mind will reach under sufficiently favorable circumstances. Suppose two men, one deaf, the other blind. One hears a man declare he means to kill another, hears the report of the pistol, and hears the victim cry; the other sees the murder done. Their sensations are affected in the highest degree with their individual peculiarities. The first information that their sensations will give them, their first inferences, will be more nearly alike, but still different; the one having, for example, the idea of a man shouting, the other of a man with a threatening aspect; but their final conclusions, the thought the remotest from sense, will be identical and free from the one-sidedness of their idiosyncrasies. There is, then, to every question a true answer, a final conclusion, to which the opinion of every man is constantly gravitating. He may for a time recede from it, but give him more experience and time for consideration, and he will finally approach it. The individual may not live to reach the truth; there is a residuum of error in every individual's opinions. No matter; it remains that there is a definite opinion to which the mind of man is, on the whole and in the long run, tending. On many questions the final agreement is already reached, on all it will be reached if time enough is given. The arbitrary will or other individual peculiarities of a sufficiently large number of minds may postpone the general agreement in that opinion indefinitely; but it cannot affect what the character of that opinion shall be when it is reached. This final opinion, then, is independent, not indeed of thought in general, but of all that is arbitrary and individual in thought; is quite independent of how you, or I, or any number of men think. (Ed.) Cf. 5.311. †4 Everything, therefore, which will be thought to exist in the final opinion is real, and nothing else. What is the POWER of external things, to affect the senses? To say that people sleep after taking opium because it has a soporific power, is that to say anything in the world but that people sleep after taking opium because they sleep after taking opium? To assert the existence of a power or potency, is it to assert the existence of anything actual? Or to say that a thing has a potential existence, is it to say that it has an actual existence? In other words, is the present existence of a power anything in the world but a regularity in future events relating to a certain thing regarded as an element which is to be taken account of beforehand, in the conception of that thing? If not, to assert that there are external things which can be known only as exerting a power on our sense, is nothing different from asserting that there is a general drift in the history of human thought which will lead it to one general agreement, one catholic consent. And any truth more perfect than this destined conclusion, any reality more absolute than what is thought in it, is a fiction of metaphysics. It is obvious how this way of thinking harmonizes with a belief in an infallible Church, and how much more natural it would be in the Middle Ages than in Protestant or positivist times.
13. This theory of reality is instantly fatal to the idea of a thing in itself, — a thing existing independent of all relation to the mind's conception of it. Yet it would by no means forbid, but rather encourage us, to regard the appearances of sense as only signs of the realities. Only, the realities which they represent would not be the unknowable cause of sensation, but noumena, or intelligible conceptions which are the last products of the mental action which is set in motion by sensation. The matter of sensation is altogether accidental; precisely the same information, practically, being capable of communication through different senses. And the catholic consent which constitutes the truth is by no means to be limited to men in this earthly life or to the human race, but extends to the whole communion of minds to which we belong, including some probably whose senses are very different from ours, so that in that consent no predication of a sensible quality can enter, except as an admission that so certain sorts of senses are affected. This theory is also highly favorable to a belief in external realities. It will, to be sure, deny that there is any reality which is absolutely incognizable in itself, so that it cannot be taken into the mind. But observing that "the external" means simply that which is independent of what phenomenon is immediately present, that is of how we may think or feel; just as "the real" means that which is independent of how we may think or feel about it; it must be granted that there are many objects of true science which are external, because there are many objects of thought which, if they are independent of that thinking whereby they are thought (that is, if they are real), are indisputably independent of all other thoughts and feelings.
14. It is plain that this view of reality is inevitably realistic; because general conceptions enter into all judgments, and therefore into true opinions. Consequently a thing in the general is as real as in the concrete. It is perfectly true that all white things have whiteness in them, for that is only saying, in another form of words, that all white things are white; but since it is true that real things possess whiteness, whiteness is real. It is a real which only exists by virtue of an act of thought knowing it, but that thought is not an arbitrary or accidental one dependent on any idiosyncrasies, but one which will hold in the final opinion.
15. This theory involves a phenomenalism. But it is the phenomenalism of Kant, and not that of Hume. Indeed, what Kant called his Copernican step was precisely the passage from the nominalistic to the realistic view of reality. It was the essence of his philosophy to regard the real object as determined by the mind. That was nothing else than to consider every conception and intuition which enters necessarily into the experience of an object, and which is not transitory and accidental, as having objective validity. In short, it was to regard the reality as the normal product of mental action, and not as the incognizable cause of it.
16. This realistic theory is thus a highly practical and common-sense position. Wherever universal agreement prevails, the realist will not be the one to disturb the general belief by idle and fictitious doubts. For according to him it is a consensus or common confession which constitutes reality. What he wants, therefore, is to see questions put to rest. And if a general belief, which is perfectly stable and immovable, can in any way be produced, though it be by the fagot and the rack, to talk of any error in such belief is utterly absurd. The realist will hold that the very same objects which are immediately present in our minds in experience really exist just as they are experienced out of the mind; that is, he will maintain a doctrine of immediate perception. He will not, therefore, sunder existence out of the mind and being in the mind as two wholly improportionable modes. When a thing is in such relation to the individual mind that that mind cognizes it, it is in the mind; and its being so in the mind will not in the least diminish its external existence. For he does not think of the mind as a receptacle, which if a thing is in, it ceases to be out of. To make a distinction between the true conception of a thing and the thing itself is, he will say, only to regard one and the same thing from two different points of view; for the immediate object of thought in a true judgment is the reality. The realist will, therefore, believe in the objectivity of all necessary conceptions, space, time, relation, cause, and the like.
17. No realist or nominalist ever expressed so definitely, perhaps, as is here done, his conception of reality. It is difficult to give a clear notion of an opinion of a past age, without exaggerating its distinctness. But careful examination of the works of the schoolmen will show that the distinction between these two views of the real — one as the fountain of the current of human thought, the other as the unmoving form to which it is flowing — is what really occasions their disagreement on the question concerning universals. The gist of all the nominalist's arguments will be found to relate to a res extra animam, while the realist defends his position only by assuming that the immediate object of thought in a true judgment is real. The notion that the controversy between realism and nominalism had anything to do with Platonic ideas is a mere product of the imagination, which the slightest examination of the books would suffice to disprove. But to prove that the statement here given of the essence of these positions is historically true and not a fancy sketch, it will be well to add a brief analysis of the opinions of Scotus and Ockam.
§3. Scotus, Ockam, and Hobbes
18. Scotus sees several questions confounded together under the usual utrum universale est aliquid in rebus. In the first place, there is the question concerning the Platonic forms. But putting Platonism aside as at least incapable of proof, and as a self-contradictory opinion if the archetypes are supposed to be strictly universal, there is the celebrated dispute among Aristotelians as to whether the universal is really in things or only derives its existence from the mind. Universality is a relation of a predicate to the subjects of which it is predicated. That can exist only in the mind, wherein alone the coupling of subject and predicate takes place. But the word universal is also used to denote what are named by such terms as a man or a horse; these are called universals, because a man is not necessarily this man, nor a horse this horse. In such a sense it is plain universals are real; there really is a man and there really is a horse. The whole difficulty is with the actually indeterminate universal, that which not only is not necessarily this, but which, being one single object of thought, is predicable of many things. In regard to this it may be asked, first, is it necessary to its existence that it should be in the mind; and, second, does it exist in re? There are two ways in which a thing may be in the mind, — habitualiter and actualiter. A notion is in the mind actualiter when it is actually conceived; it is in the mind habitualiter when it can directly produce a conception. It is by virtue of mental association (we moderns should say), that things are in the mind habitualiter. In the Aristotelian philosophy, the intellect is regarded as being to the soul what the eye is to the body. The mind perceives likenesses and other relations in the objects of sense, and thus just as sense affords sensible images of things, so the intellect affords intelligible images of them. It is as such a species intelligibilis that Scotus supposes that a conception exists which is in the mind habitualiter, not actualiter. This species is in the mind, in the sense of being the immediate object of knowledge, but its existence in the mind is independent of consciousness. Now that the actual cognition of the universal is necessary to its existence, Scotus denies. The subject of science is universal; and if the existence of [the] universal were dependent upon what we happened to be thinking, science would not relate to anything real. On the other hand, he admits that the universal must be in the mind habitualiter, so that if a thing be considered as it is independent of its being cognized, there is no universality in it. For there is in re extra no one intelligible object attributed to different things. He holds, therefore, that such natures (i.e. sorts of things) as a man and a horse, which are real, and are not of themselves necessarily this man or this horse, though they cannot exist in re without being some particular man or horse, are in the species intelligibilis always represented positively indeterminate, it being the nature of the mind so to represent things. Accordingly any such nature is to be regarded as something which is of itself neither universal nor singular, but is universal in the mind, singular in things out of the mind. If there were nothing in the different men or horses which was not of itself singular, there would be no real unity except the numerical unity of the singulars; which would involve such absurd consequences as that the only real difference would be a numerical difference, and that there would be no real likenesses among things. If, therefore, it is asked whether the universal is in things, the answer is, that the nature which in the mind is universal, and is not in itself singular, exists in things. It is the very same nature which in the mind is universal and in re is singular; for if it were not, in knowing anything of a universal we should be knowing nothing of things, but only of our own thoughts, and our opinion would not be converted from true to false by a change in things. This nature is actually indeterminate only so far as it is in the mind. But to say that an object is in the mind is only a metaphorical way of saying that it stands to the intellect in the relation of known to knower. The truth is, therefore, that that real nature which exists in re, apart from all action of the intellect, though in itself, apart from its relations, it be singular, yet is actually universal as it exists in relation to the mind. But this universal only differs from the singular in the manner of its being conceived (formaliter), but not in the manner of its existence (realiter).
19. Though this is the slightest possible sketch of the realism of Scotus, and leaves a number of important points unnoticed, yet it is sufficient to show the general manner of his thought and how subtle and difficult his doctrine is. That about one and the same nature being in the grade of singularity in existence, and in the grade of universality in the mind, gave rise to an extensive doctrine concerning the various kinds of identity and difference, called the doctrine of the formalitates; and this is the point against which Ockam directed his attack.
20. Ockam's nominalism may be said to be the next stage in English opinion. As Scotus's mind is always running on forms, so Ockam's is on logical terms; and all the subtle distinctions which Scotus effects by his formalitates, Ockam explains by implied syncategorematics (or adverbial expressions, such as per se, etc.) in terms. Ockam always thinks of a mental conception as a logical term, which, instead of existing on paper, or in the voice, is in the mind, but is of the same general nature, namely, a sign. The conception and the word differ in two respects: first, a word is arbitrarily imposed, while a conception is a natural sign; second, a word signifies whatever it signifies only indirectly, through the conception which signifies the same thing directly. Ockam enunciates his nominalism as follows: "It should be known that singular may be taken in two senses. In one sense, it signifies that which is one and not many; and in this sense those who hold that the universal is a quality of mind predicable of many, standing however in this predication, not for itself, but for those many (i.e. the nominalists), have to say that every universal is truly and really singular; because as every word, however general we may agree to consider it, is truly and really singular and one in number, because it is one and not many, so every universal is singular. In another sense, the name singular is used to denote whatever is one and not many, is a sign of something which is singular in the first sense, and is not fit to be the sign of many. Whence, using the word universal for that which is not one in number, — an acceptation many attribute to it, — I say that there is no universal; unless perchance you abuse the word and say that people is not one in number and is universal. But that would be puerile. It is to be maintained, therefore, that every universal is one singular thing, and therefore there is no universal except by signification, that is, by its being the sign of many." (Ed.) See William Ockham, Summa Logicae, Pars Prima, Philotheus Boehner, ed., St. Bonaventure, New York, 1951, p. 44; cf. Ernest A. Moody, The Logic of William of Ockham, Sheed and Ward, Inc., New York, 1935, footnotes pp. 81-82, for a somewhat different version of this passage. †5 The arguments by which he supports this position present nothing of interest. The entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem is the argument of Durand de St. Pourcain. But any given piece of popular information about scholasticism may be safely assumed to be wrong. †6 Against Scotus's doctrine that universals are without the mind in individuals, but are not really distinct from the individuals, but only formally so, he objects that it is impossible there should be any distinction existing out of the mind except between things really distinct. Yet he does not think of denying that an individual consists of matter and form, for these, though inseparable, are really distinct things; though a modern nominalist might ask in what sense things could be said to be distinct independently of any action of the mind, which are so inseparable as matter and form. But as to relation, he most emphatically and clearly denies that it exists as anything different from the things related; and this denial he expressly extends to relations of agreement and likeness as well as to those of opposition. While, therefore, he admits the real existence of qualities, he denies that these real qualities are respects in which things agree or differ; but things which agree or differ agree or differ in themselves and in no respect extra animam. He allows that things without the mind are similar, but this similarity consists merely in the fact that the mind can abstract one notion from the contemplation of them. A resemblance, therefore, consists solely in the property of the mind by which it naturally imposes one mental sign upon the resembling things. Yet he allows there is something in the things to which this mental sign corresponds.
21. This is the nominalism of Ockam so far as it can be sketched in a single paragraph, and without entering into the complexities of the Aristotelian psychology nor of the parva logicalia. He is not so thoroughgoing as he might be, yet compared with Durandus and other contemporary nominalists he seems very radical and profound. He is truly the venerabilis inceptor of a new way of philosophizing which has now broadened, perhaps deepened also, into English empiricism.
22. England never forgot these teachings. During that Renaissance period when men could think that human knowledge was to be advanced by the use of Cicero's Commonplaces, we naturally see little effect from them; but one of the earliest prominent figures in modern philosophy is a man who carried the nominalistic spirit into everything — religion, ethics, psychology, and physics, the plusquam nominalis, Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. His razor cuts off, not merely substantial forms, but every incorporeal substance. As for universals, he not only denies their real existence, but even that there are any universal conceptions except so far as we conceive names. In every part of his logic, names and speech play an extraordinarily important part. Truth and falsity, he says, have no place but among such creatures as use speech, for a true proposition is simply one whose predicate is the name of everything of which the subject is the name. "From hence, also, this may be deduced, that the first truths were arbitrarily made by those that first of all imposed names upon things, or received them from the imposition of others. For it is true (for example), that man is a living creature, but it is for this reason that it pleased men to impose both those names on the same thing." (Ed.) The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Sir William Molesworth, ed., Vol. I, London, 1839, p. 36. †7 The difference between true religion and superstition is simply that the state recognizes the former and not the latter.
23. The nominalistic love of simple theories is seen also in his opinion, that every event is a movement, and that the sensible qualities exist only in sensible beings, and in his doctrine that man is at bottom purely selfish in his actions.
24. His views concerning matter are worthy of notice, because Berkeley is known to have been a student of Hobbes, as Hobbes confesses himself to have been of Ockam. The following paragraph gives his opinion:—
"And as for that matter which is common to all things, and which philosophers, following Aristotle, usually call materia prima, that is, first matter, it is not a body distinct from all other bodies, nor is it one of them. What then is it? A mere name; yet a name which is not of vain use; for it signifies a conception of body without the consideration of any form or other accident except only magnitude or extension, and aptness to receive form and other accident. So that whensoever we have use of the name body in general, if we use that of materia prima, we do well. For when a man, not knowing which was first, water or ice, would find out which of the two were the matter of both, he would be fain to suppose some third matter which were neither of these two; so he that would find out what is the matter of all things ought to suppose such as is not the matter of anything that exists. Wherefore materia prima is nothing; and therefore they do not attribute to it form or any other accident, besides quantity; whereas all singular things have their forms and accidents certain.
"Materia prima therefore is body in general, that is, body considered universally, not as having neither form nor any accident, but in which no form nor any other accident but quantity are at all considered, that is, they are not drawn into argumentation." — p. 118. (Ed.) The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Sir William Molesworth, ed., Vol. I, London, 1839, pp. 118-119. †8
25. The next great name in English philosophy is Locke's. His philosophy is nominalistic, but does not regard things from a logical point of view at all. Nominalism, however, appears in psychology as sensationalism; for nominalism arises from taking that view of reality which regards whatever is in thought as caused by something in sense, and whatever is in sense as caused by something without the mind. But everybody knows that this is the character of Locke's philosophy. He believed that every idea springs from sensation and from his (vaguely explained) reflection.
§4. Berkeley's Philosophy
26. Berkeley is undoubtedly more the offspring of Locke than of any other philosopher. Yet the influence of Hobbes with him is very evident and great; and Malebranche doubtless contributed to his thought. But he was by nature a radical and a nominalist. His whole philosophy rests upon an extreme nominalism of a sensationalistic type. He sets out with the proposition (supposed to have been already proved by Locke), that all the ideas in our minds are simply reproductions of sensations, external and internal. He maintains, moreover, that sensations can only be thus reproduced in such combinations as might have been given in immediate perception. We can conceive a man without a head, because there is nothing in the nature of sense to prevent our seeing such a thing; but we cannot conceive a sound without any pitch, because the two things are necessarily united in perception. On this principle he denies that we can have any abstract general ideas, that is, that universals can exist in the mind; if I think of a man it must be either of a short or a long or a middle-sized man, because if I see a man he must be one or the other of these. In the first draft of the Introduction of the Principles of Human Knowledge, which is now for the first time printed, he even goes so far as to censure Ockam for admitting that we can have general terms in our mind; Ockam's opinion being that we have in our minds conceptions, which are singular themselves, but are signs of many things. The sole difference between Ockam and Hobbes is that the former admits the universal signs in the mind to be natural, while the latter thinks they only follow instituted language. The consequence of this difference is that, while Ockam regards all truth as depending on the mind's naturally imposing the same sign on two things, Hobbes will have it that the first truths were established by convention. But both would doubtless allow that there is something in re to which such truths corresponded. But the sense of Berkeley's implication would be that there are no universal thought-signs at all. Whence it would follow that there is no truth and no judgments but propositions spoken or on paper. †9 But Berkeley probably knew only of Ockam from hearsay, and perhaps thought he occupied a position like that of Locke. Locke had a very singular opinion on the subject of general conceptions. He says:—
"If we nicely reflect upon them, we shall find that general ideas are fictions, and contrivances of the mind, that carry difficulty with them, and do not so easily offer themselves as we are apt to imagine. For example, does it not require some pains and skill to form the general idea of a triangle (which is none of the most abstract, comprehensive, and difficult); for it must be neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once? In effect, is something imperfect that cannot exist, an idea wherein some parts of several different and inconsistent ideas are put together." (Ed.) See An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke, edited by Alexander Campbell Fraser, Vol. II, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1894, p. 247, §9. †10
27. To this Berkeley replies:—
"Much is here said of the difficulty that abstract ideas carry with them, and the pains and skill requisite in forming them. And it is on all hands agreed that there is need of great toil and labor of the mind to emancipate our thoughts from particular objects, and raise them to those sublime speculations that are conversant about abstract ideas. From all which the natural consequence should seem to be, that so difficult a thing as the forming of abstract ideas was not necessary to communication, which is so easy and familiar to all sort of men. But we are told, if they seem obvious and easy to grown men, it is only because by constant and familiar use they are made so. Now, I would fain know at what time it is men are employed in surmounting that difficulty [and furnishing themselves with those necessary helps for discourse]. It cannot be when they are grown up, for then it seems they are not conscious of such painstaking; it remains, therefore, to be the business of their childhood. And surely the great and multiplied labor of framing abstract notions will be found a hard task at that tender age. Is it not a hard thing to imagine that a couple of children cannot prate together of their sugar-plums and rattles, and the rest of their little trinkets, till they have first tacked together numberless inconsistencies, and so formed in their minds abstract general ideas, and annexed them to every common name they make use of?" (Ed.) In the work under review this passage from the introduction to "A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge" is to be found in Vol. I, p. 146, §14. The portion in brackets was omitted by Peirce without notice. †11
28. In his private note-book Berkeley has the following:— "Mem. To bring the killing blow at the last, e.g. in the matter of abstraction to bring Locke's general triangle in the last." (Ed.) In the work under review this passage is in "Commonplace Book of Occasional Metaphysical Thoughts," Vol. IV, p. 448. †12
There was certainly an opportunity for a splendid blow here, and he gave it.
29. From this nominalism he deduces his idealistic doctrine. And he puts it beyond any doubt that, if this principle be admitted, the existence of matter must be denied. Nothing that we can know or even think can exist without the mind, for we can only think reproductions of sensations, and the esse of these is percipi. To put it another way, we cannot think of a thing as existing unperceived, for we cannot separate in thought what cannot be separated in perception. It is true, I can think of a tree in a park without anybody by to see it; but I cannot think of it without anybody to imagine it; for I am aware that I am imagining it all the time. Syllogistically: trees, mountains, rivers, and all sensible things are perceived; and anything which is perceived is a sensation; now for a sensation to exist without being perceived is impossible; therefore, for any sensible thing to exist out of perception is impossible. Nor can there be anything out of the mind which resembles a sensible object, for the conception of likeness cannot be separated from likeness between ideas, because that is the only likeness which can be given in perception. An idea can be nothing but an idea, and it is absurd to say that anything inaudible can resemble a sound, or that anything invisible can resemble a color. But what exists without the mind can neither be heard nor seen; for we perceive only sensations within the mind. It is said that Matter exists without the mind. But what is meant by matter? It is acknowledged to be known only as supporting the accidents of bodies; and this word 'supporting' in this connection is a word without meaning. Nor is there any necessity for the hypothesis of external bodies. What we observe is that we have ideas. Were there any use in supposing external things it would be to account for this fact. But grant that bodies exist, and no one can say how they can possibly affect the mind; so that instead of removing a difficulty, the hypothesis only makes a new one.
30. But though Berkeley thinks we know nothing out of the mind, he by no means holds that all our experience is of a merely phantasmagoric character. It is not all a dream; for there are two things which distinguish experience from imagination: one is the superior vividness of experience; the other and most important is its connected character. Its parts hang together in the most intimate and intricate conjunction, in consequence of which we can infer the future from the past. "These two things it is," says Berkeley, in effect, "which constitute reality. I do not, therefore, deny the reality of common experience, although I deny its externality." Here we seem to have a third new conception of reality, different from either of those which we have insisted are characteristic of the nominalist and realist respectively, or if this is to be identified with either of those, it is with the realist view. Is not this something quite unexpected from so extreme a nominalist? To us, at least, it seems that this conception is indeed required to give an air of common sense to Berkeley's theory, but that it is of a totally different complexion from the rest. It seems to be something imported into his philosophy from without. We shall glance at this point again presently. He goes on to say that ideas are perfectly inert and passive. One idea does not make another and there is no power or agency in it. Hence, as there must be some cause of the succession of ideas, it must be Spirit. There is no idea of a spirit. But I have a consciousness of the operations of my spirit, what he calls a notion of my activity in calling up ideas at pleasure, and so have a relative knowledge of myself as an active being. But there is a succession of ideas not dependent on my will, the ideas of perception. Real things do not depend on my thought, but have an existence distinct from being perceived by me; but the esse of everything is percipi; therefore, there must be some other mind wherein they exist. "As sure, therefore, as the sensible world really exists, so sure do there an infinite omnipotent Spirit who contains and supports it." (Ed.) In the work reviewed this passage from "The Second Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous" is in Vol. I, p. 304. There the passage reads: "As sure, therefore, as the sensible world really exists, so sure is there an infinite omnipresent Spirit, who contains and supports it." †13 This puts the keystone into the arch of Berkeleyan idealism, and gives a theory of the relation of the mind to external nature which, compared with the Cartesian Divine Assistance, is very satisfactory. It has been well remarked that, if the Cartesian dualism be admitted, no divine assistance can enable things to affect the mind or the mind things, but divine power must do the whole work. Berkeley's philosophy, like so many others, has partly originated in an attempt to escape the inconveniences of the Cartesian dualism. God, who has created our spirits, has the power immediately to raise ideas in them; and out of his wisdom and benevolence, he does this with such regularity that these ideas may serve as signs of one another. Hence, the laws of nature. Berkeley does not explain how our wills act on our bodies, but perhaps he would say that to a certain limited extent we can produce ideas in the mind of God as he does in ours. But a material thing being only an idea, exists only so long as it is in some mind. Should every mind cease to think it for a while, for so long it ceases to exist. Its permanent existence is kept up by its being an idea in the mind of God. Here we see how superficially the just-mentioned theory of reality is laid over the body of his thought. If the reality of a thing consists in its harmony with the body of realities, it is a quite needless extravagance to say that it ceases to exist as soon as it is no longer thought of. For the coherence of an idea with experience in general does not depend at all upon its being actually present to the mind all the time. But it is clear that when Berkeley says that reality consists in the connection of experience, he is simply using the word reality in a sense of his own. That an object's independence of our thought about it is constituted by its connection with experience in general, he has never conceived. On the contrary, that, according to him, is effected by its being in the mind of God. In the usual sense of the word reality, therefore, Berkeley's doctrine is that the reality of sensible things resides only in their archetypes in the divine mind. This is Platonistic, but it is not realistic. On the contrary, since it places reality wholly out of the mind in the cause of sensations, and since it denies reality (in the true sense of the word) to sensible things in so far as they are sensible, it is distinctly nominalistic. Historically there have been prominent examples of an alliance between nominalism and Platonism. Abélard and John of Salisbury, the only two defenders of nominalism of the time of the great controversy whose works remain to us, are both Platonists; and Roscellin, the famous author of the sententia de flatu vocis, the first man in the Middle Ages who carried attention to nominalism, is said and believed (all his writings are lost) to have been a follower of Scotus Erigena, the great Platonist of the ninth century. The reason of this odd conjunction of doctrines may perhaps be guessed at. The nominalist, by isolating his reality so entirely from mental influence as he has done, has made it something which the mind cannot conceive; he has created the so often talked of "improportion between the mind and the thing in itself." And it is to overcome the various difficulties to which this gives rise, that he supposes this noumenon, which, being totally unknown, the imagination can play about as it pleases, to be the emanation of archetypal ideas. The reality thus receives an intelligible nature again, and the peculiar inconveniences of nominalism are to some degree avoided.
31. It does not seem to us strange that Berkeley's idealistic writings have not been received with much favor. They contain a great deal of argumentation of doubtful soundness, the dazzling character of which puts us more on our guard against it. They appear to be the productions of a most brilliant, original, powerful, but not thoroughly disciplined mind. He is apt to set out with wildly radical propositions, which he qualifies when they lead him to consequences he is not prepared to accept, without seeing how great the importance of his admissions is. He plainly begins his principles of human knowledge with the assumption that we have nothing in our minds but sensations, external and internal, and reproductions of them in the imagination. This goes far beyond Locke; it can be maintained only by the help of that "mental chemistry" started by Hartley. But soon we find him admitting various notions which are not ideas, or reproductions of sensations, the most striking of which is the notion of a cause, which he leaves himself no way of accounting for experientially. Again, he lays down the principle that we can have no ideas in which the sensations are reproduced in an order or combination different from what could have occurred in experience; and that therefore we have no abstract conceptions. But he very soon grants that we can consider a triangle, without attending to whether it is equilateral, isosceles, or scalene; and does not reflect that such exclusive attention constitutes a species of abstraction. His want of profound study is also shown in his so wholly mistaking, as he does, the function of the hypothesis of matter. He thinks its only purpose is to account for the production of ideas in our minds, so occupied is he with the Cartesian problem. But the real part that material substance has to play is to account for (or formulate) the constant connection between the accidents. In his theory, this office is performed by the wisdom and benevolence of God in exciting ideas with such regularity that we can know what to expect. This makes the unity of accidents a rational unity, the material theory makes it a unity not of a directly intellectual origin. The question is, then, which does experience, which does science decide for? Does it appear that in nature all regularities are directly rational, all causes final causes; or does it appear that regularities extend beyond the requirement of a rational purpose, and are brought about by mechanical causes. Now science, as we all know, is generally hostile to the final causes, the operation of which it would restrict within certain spheres, and it finds decidedly an other than directly intellectual regularity in the universe. Accordingly the claim which Mr. Collyns Simon, Professor Fraser, and Mr. Archer Butler make for Berkeleyanism, that it is especially fit to harmonize with scientific thought, is as far as possible from the truth. The sort of science that his idealism would foster would be one which should consist in saying what each natural production was made for. Berkeley's own remarks about natural philosophy show how little he sympathized with physicists. They should all be read; we have only room to quote a detached sentence or two:—
"To endeavor to explain the production of colors or sound by figure, motion, magnitude, and the like, must needs be labor in vain . . . . In the business of gravitation or mutual attraction, because it appears in many instances, some are straightway for pronouncing it universal; and that to attract and be attracted by every body is an essential quality inherent in all bodies whatever . . . . There is nothing necessary or essential in the case, but it depends entirely on the will of the Governing Spirit, who causes certain bodies to cleave together or tend towards each other according to various laws, whilst he keeps others at a fixed distance; and to some he gives a quite contrary tendency, to fly asunder just as he sees convenient . . . . First, it is plain philosophers amuse themselves in vain, when they inquire for any natural efficient cause, distinct from mind or spirit. Secondly, considering the whole creation is the workmanship of a wise and good Agent, it should seem to become philosophers to employ their thoughts (contrary to what some hold) about the final causes of things; and I must confess I see no reason why pointing out the various ends to which natural things are adapted, and for which they were originally with unspeakable wisdom contrived, should not be thought one good way of accounting for them, and altogether worthy of a philosopher." — Vol. I. p. 466. (Ed.) In the work reviewed this passage from "A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge," Part I, is in Vol. I, p. 208 (§102), p. 210 (§106), and pp. 210-211 (§107). †14
32. After this how can his disciples say "that the true logic of physics is the first conclusion from his system"!
33. As for that argument which is so much used by Berkeley and others, that such and such a thing cannot exist because we cannot so much as frame the idea of such a thing, — that matter, for example, is impossible because it is an abstract idea, and we have no abstract ideas, — it appears to us to be a mode of reasoning which is to be used with extreme caution. Are the facts such, that if we could have an idea of the thing in question, we should infer its existence, or are they not? If not, no argument is necessary against its existence, until something is found out to make us suspect it exists. But if we ought to infer that it exists, if we only could frame the idea of it, why should we allow our mental incapacity to prevent us from adopting the proposition which logic requires? If such arguments had prevailed in mathematics (and Berkeley was equally strenuous in advocating them there), and if everything about negative quantities, the square root of minus, and infinitesimals, had been excluded from the subject on the ground that we can form no idea of such things, the science would have been simplified no doubt, simplified by never advancing to the more difficult matters. A better rule for avoiding the deceits of language is this: Do things fulfil the same function practically? Then let them be signified by the same word. Do they not? Then let them be distinguished. If I have learned a formula in gibberish which in any way jogs my memory so as to enable me in each single case to act as though I had a general idea, what possible utility is there in distinguishing between such a gibberish and formula and an idea? Why use the term a general idea in such a sense as to separate things which, for all experiential purposes, are the same? (Ed.) This is an early anticipation of Peirce's pragmatism, which is discussed in detail in [CP] V, Pragmatism and Pragmaticism. See especially 5.402, 5.453, 5.504n1 (p. 353). Cf. also 7.360. †15
34. The great inconsistency of the Berkeleyan theory, which prevents his nominalistic principles from appearing in their true colors, is that he has not treated mind and matter in the same way. All that he has said against the existence of matter might be said against the existence of mind; and the only thing which prevented his seeing that, was the vagueness of the Lockian reflection, or faculty of internal perception. It was not until after he had published his systematic exposition of his doctrine, that this objection ever occurred to him. He alludes to it in one of his dialogues, but his answer to it is very lame. Hume seized upon this point, and, developing it, equally denied the existence of mind and matter, maintaining that only appearances exist. Hume's philosophy is nothing but Berkeley's, with this change made in it, and written by a mind of a more sceptical tendency. The innocent bishop generated Hume; and as no one disputes that Hume gave rise to all modern philosophy of every kind, Berkeley ought to have a far more important place in the history of philosophy than has usually been assigned to him. His doctrine was the half-way station, or necessary resting-place between Locke's and Hume's.
35. Hume's greatness consists in the fact that he was the man who had the courage to carry out his principles to their utmost consequences, without regard to the character of the conclusions he reached. But neither he nor any other one has set forth nominalism in an absolutely thoroughgoing manner; and it is safe to say that no one ever will, unless it be to reduce it to absurdity.
36. We ought to say one word about Berkeley's theory of vision. It was undoubtedly an extraordinary piece of reasoning, and might have served for the basis of the modern science. Historically it has not had that fortune, because the modern science has been chiefly created in Germany, where Berkeley is little known and greatly misunderstood. We may fairly say that Berkeley taught the English some of the most essential principles of that hypothesis of sight which is now getting to prevail, more than a century before they were known to the rest of the world. This is much; but what is claimed by some of his advocates is astounding. One writer says that Berkeley's theory has been accepted by the leaders of all schools of thought! Professor Fraser admits that it has attracted no attention in Germany, but thinks the German mind too a priori to like Berkeley's reasoning. But Helmholtz, who has done more than any other man to bring the empiricist theory into favor, says: "Our knowledge of the phenomena of vision is not so complete as to allow only one theory and exclude every other. It seems to me that the choice which different savans make between different theories of vision has thus far been governed more by their metaphysical inclinations than by any constraining power which the facts have had." (Ed.) See Helmholtz's Treatise on Physiological Optics, §33. †16 The best authorities, however, prefer the empiricist hypothesis; the fundamental proposition of which, as it is of Berkeley's, is that the sensations which we have in seeing are signs of the relations of things whose interpretation has to be discovered inductively. In the enumeration of the signs and of their uses, Berkeley shows considerable power in that sort of investigation, though there is naturally no very close resemblance between his and the modern accounts of the matter. There is no modern physiologist who would not think that Berkeley had greatly exaggerated the part that the muscular sense plays in vision.
37. Berkeley's theory of vision was an important step in the development of the associationalist psychology. He thought all our conceptions of body and of space were simply reproductions in the imagination of sensations of touch (including the muscular sense). This, if it were true, would be a most surprising case of mental chemistry, that is of a sensation being felt and yet so mixed with others that we cannot by an act of simple attention recognize it. Doubtless this theory had its influence in the production of Hartley's system.
Hume's phenomenalism and Hartley's associationalism were put forth almost contemporaneously about 1750. They contain the fundamental positions of the current English "positivism." From 1750 down to 1830 — eighty years — nothing of particular importance was added to the nominalistic doctrine. At the beginning of this period Hume was toning down his earlier radicalism, and Smith's theory of Moral Sentiments appeared. Later came Priestley's materialism, but there was nothing new in that; and just at the end of the period, Brown's Lectures on the Human Mind. The great body of the philosophy of those eighty years is of the Scotch common-sense school. It is a weak sort of realistic reaction, for which there is no adequate explanation within the sphere of the history of philosophy. It would be curious to inquire whether anything in the history of society could account for it. In 1829 appeared James Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind, a really great nominalistic book again. This was followed by Stuart Mill's Logic in 1843. Since then, the school has produced nothing of the first importance; and it will very likely lose its distinctive character now for a time, by being merged in an empiricism of a less metaphysical and more working kind. Already in Stuart Mill the nominalism is less salient than in the classical writers; though it is quite unmistakable.
§5. Science and Realism
38. Thus we see how large a part of the metaphysical ideas of today have come to us by inheritance from very early times, Berkeley being one of the intellectual ancestors whose labors did as much as any one's to enhance the value of the bequest. The realistic philosophy of the last century has now lost all its popularity, except with the most conservative minds. And science as well as philosophy is nominalistic. The doctrine of the correlation of forces, the discoveries of Helmholtz, and the hypotheses of Liebig and of Darwin, have all that character of explaining familiar phenomena apparently of a peculiar kind by extending the operation of simple mechanical principles, which belongs to nominalism. Or if the nominalistic character of these doctrines themselves cannot be detected, it will at least be admitted that they are observed to carry along with them those daughters of nominalism, — sensationalism, phenomenalism, individualism, and materialism. That physical science is necessarily connected with doctrines of a debasing moral tendency will be believed by few. But if we hold that such an effect will not be produced by these doctrines on a mind which really understands them, we are accepting this belief, not on experience, which is rather against it, but on the strength of our general faith that what is really true it is good to believe and evil to reject. On the other hand, it is allowable to suppose that science has no essential affinity with the philosophical views with which it seems to be every year more associated. History cannot be held to exclude this supposition; and science as it exists is certainly much less nominalistic than the nominalists think it should be. Whewell represents it quite as well as Mill. Yet a man who enters into the scientific thought of the day and has not materialistic tendencies, is getting to be an impossibility. So long as there is a dispute between nominalism and realism, so long as the position we hold on the question is not determined by any proof indisputable, but is more or less a matter of inclination, a man as he gradually comes to feel the profound hostility of the two tendencies will, if he is not less than man, become engaged with one or other and can no more obey both than he can serve God and Mammon. If the two impulses are neutralized within him, the result simply is that he is left without any great intellectual motive. There is, indeed, no reason to suppose the logical question is in its own nature unsusceptible of solution. But that path out of the difficulty lies through the thorniest mazes of a science as dry as mathematics. Now there is a demand for mathematics; it helps to build bridges and drive engines, and therefore it becomes somebody's business to study it severely. But to have a philosophy is a matter of luxury; the only use of that is to make us feel comfortable and easy. It is a study for leisure hours; and we want it supplied in an elegant, an agreeable, an interesting form. The law of natural selection, which is the precise analogue in another realm of the law of supply and demand, has the most immediate effect in fostering the other faculties of the understanding, for the men of mental power succeed in the struggle for life; but the faculty of philosophizing, except in the literary way, is not called for; and therefore a difficult question cannot be expected to reach solution until it takes some practical form. If anybody should have the good luck to find out the solution, nobody else would take the trouble to understand it. But though the question of realism and nominalism has its roots in the technicalities of logic, its branches reach about our life. The question whether the genus homo has any existence except as individuals, is the question whether there is anything of any more dignity, worth, and importance than individual happiness, individual aspirations, and individual life. Whether men really have anything in common, so that the community is to be considered as an end in itself, and if so, what the relative value of the two factors is, is the most fundamental practical question in regard to every public institution the constitution of which we have it in our power to influence.
Chapter 3: Josiah Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (Ed.) Review of Josiah Royce's The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1885, 484 pp.), hereafter referred to as [RAP], from a manuscript in Houghton Library. The first three pages (half-sheets) of this manuscript are missing and there is no explicit statement in the remainder that this is a review of [RAP], but all of the quotations from the work under review have been located there. In a letter to James, dated 28 October 1885 (James Collection, Houghton Library), Peirce says that he wrote a review of Royce's book for Youmans, who would not take it. (E. L. Youmans and W.J. Youmans edited Popular Scientific Monthly at this time. Peirce refers to this journal in the text below.) The dates of the letter and [RAP] establish the date of the review as c.1885. It is the case, however, that some of the pages and many of the corrections in the manuscript are in a different ink and finer handwriting from the others, and hence they may be of a somewhat different date. †1
§1. The Concept of Reality
39. Dr. Royce has produced a work which will form a good introduction to Hegel. His language and his thought are equally lucid and within the capacity of ordinary minds, — his style is animated and readable, and in passages rises without effort to true philosophical eloquence. His method is a dialectic one; that is to say, it proceeds by the criticism of opinions, first, destructively to absolute scepticism, and then finds hidden in that scepticism itself the highest truth. It differs, however, very decidedly from the dialectic of Hegel, — and in its simplicity and general tone reminds us rather of the reasoning of Plato.
40. But before we examine the method, let us glance at the philosophical upshot of the book. This is, that the reality of whatever really exists consists in the real thing being thought by God. (Ed.) [RAP] Ch. X, "Idealism." †2 Ordinary people think that things exist by the will of God; and if thought be taken in so wide a sense as to include volition, they have no difficulty in admitting the proposition which Dr. Royce has borrowed from Hegel and Schelling. But ordinary people say that not merely the real but all that can possibly enter into the mind of man must be within the thought of God in some sense; so that it must be some particular kind of divine thought which constitutes reality; and that particular kind of thought must be distinguished by a volitional element. In short, ordinary people make at once the very same criticism that the profoundest students of philosophy have made, namely, that the Hegelian school overlooks the importance of the will as an element of thought.
41. A certain writer has suggested that reality, the fact that there is such a thing as a true answer to a question, consists in this: that human inquiries, — human reasoning and observation, — tend toward the settlement of disputes and ultimate agreement in definite conclusions which are independent of the particular stand-points from which the different inquirers may have set out; so that the real is that which any man would believe in, and be ready to act upon, if his investigations were to be pushed sufficiently far. (Ed.) Cf. 5.311ff. †3 Upon the luckless putter-forth of this opinion Dr. Royce is extremely severe. He will not even name him (perhaps to spare the family), but refers to him by various satirical nick-names, especially as "Thrasymachus," (Ed.) [RAP] 393-394, 426ff. †4 — a foolish character introduced into the Republic and another dialogue of Plato for the purpose of showing how vastly such an ignorant pretender to philosophy is inferior to Socrates (that is, to Plato himself) in every quality of mind and heart, and especially in good manners. But I must with shame confess that if I understand what the opinion of this poor, Royce-forsaken Thrasymachus is, I coincide with it exactly. I ask any man, Suppose you could be miraculously assured that a certain answer to any question that interests you would be the one in which, were your life and mental vigor to be indefinitely prolonged, you must eventually rest, would you not cease all inquiries at once, and be content with that answer now, as being the very thing you had been striving after? This question Dr. Royce answers explicitly in the negative. "No barely possible judge," he says, "who would see the error, if he were there, will do for us." (Ed.) [RAP] 427. †5 Yet if I were to represent Dr. Royce as preferring to believe for a little while that which a certain Being — no matter who — imagines, rather than to come at once to the belief to which investigation is destined at last to carry him, I should probably be doing him injustice; because I suppose he would say that the thing which God imagines, and the opinion to which investigation would ultimately lead him, in point of fact, coincide. If, however, these two things coincide, I fail to understand why he should be so cruel to the childish Thrasymachus; since after all there is no real difference between them, but only a formal one, — each maintaining as a theorem that which the other adopts as a definition. As was just remarked, the Hegelian school does not sufficiently take into account the volitional element of cognition. Dr. Royce admits in words that belief is what a man will act from; but he does not seem to have taken the truth of this proposition home to him, or else he would see that the whole end of inquiry is the settlement of belief; so that a man shall not war against himself, nor undo tomorrow that which he begins to do today. Dr. Royce's main argument in support of his own opinion, to the confusion of Thrasymachus, is drawn from the existence of error. Namely, the subject of an erroneous proposition could not be identified with the subject of the corresponding true proposition, except by being completely known, and in that knowledge no error would be possible. The truth must, therefore, be present to the actual consciousness of a living being. This is an argument drawn from Formal logic, for Formal logic it is which inquires how different propositions are made to refer to the same subject, and the like. German metaphysics has, since Kant, drawn its best arguments from Formal logic; and it is quite right in doing so, for the conceptions which are proved to be indispensable in Formal logic, must have been already rooted in the nature of the mind when reasoning first began, and are, so far, a priori. But one would surely have supposed that when the German philosophers were thus drawing their arguments from formal logic, they would have postponed their venturesome flights into the thin air of theology and the vacuum of pure reason, until they had carefully tried the strength of every part of that logical machine on which they were to depend. Instead of that, they have left the great work of creating a true system of formal logic to English authors, who, while they have done most excellent work, have (with the insignificant exception of the present writer) been quite indifferent to the transcendental bearings of their results. Kant gives a half dozen only of his brief pages to the development of the system of logic upon which his whole philosophy rests; and though many valuable treatises on the science have appeared in Germany, there is hardly one of them which is not more or less marred by some arrant absurdity, acknowledged to be so by all the others; Grassmann and Schroeder alone pursuing the one method which will yield positive results properly secured against error. We must not, therefore, wonder that Dr. Royce's argument from formal logic overlooks one of the most important discoveries that have lately resulted from the study of that exact branch of philosophy. He seems to think that the real subject of a proposition can be denoted by a general term of the proposition; that is, that precisely what it is that you are talking about can be distinguished from other things by giving a general description of it. Kant already showed, in a celebrated passage of his cataclysmic work, that this is not so; and recent studies in formal logic Mitchell in Logical Studies by members of the Johns Hopkins University, and Peirce in the American Journal of Mathematics, vol. vii. (Ed.) These items are listed at [Bibliography] G-1883-7 and G-1885-3. †6 have put it in a clearer light. We now find that, besides general terms, two other kinds of signs are perfectly indispensable in all reasoning. One of these kinds is the index, which like a pointing finger exercises a real physiological force over the attention, like the power of a mesmerizer, and directs it to a particular object of sense. (Ed.) Cf. 2.248 and elsewhere in [CP] II. †7 One such index at least must enter into every proposition, its function being to designate the subject of discourse. Now observe that Dr. Royce does not merely say that there are no means by which an erroneous proposition can be produced; what he says is that the conception of an erroneous proposition (without an actual including consciousness) is absurd. If the subject of discourse had to be distinguished from other things, if at all, by a general term, that is, by its peculiar characters, it would be quite true that its complete segregation would require a full knowledge of its characters and would preclude ignorance. But the index, which in point of fact alone can designate the subject of a proposition, designates it without implying any characters at all. A blinding flash of lightning forces my attention and directs it to a certain moment of time with an emphatic "Now!" Directly following it, I may judge that there will be a terrific peal of thunder, and if it does not come I acknowledge an error. One instant of time is, in itself, exactly like any other instant, one point of space like any other point; nevertheless dates and positions can be approximately distinguished. And how are they so distinguished? By intuition says Kant; perhaps not in so many words; but it is because of this property that he distinguishes Space and Time from the general conceptions of the understanding and sets them off by themselves under the head of intuition. But I should prefer to say that it is by volitional acts that dates and positions are distinguished. The element of feeling is so prominent in sensations, that we do not observe that something like Will enters into them, too. You may quarrel with the word volition if you like; I wish I had a more general one at my hand. But what I mean is that that strong, clear, and voluntary consciousness in which we act upon our muscles is nothing more than the most marked variety of a kind of consciousness which enters into many other phenomena of our life, a consciousness of duality or dual consciousness. Feeling is simple consciousness, the consciousness that can be contained within an instant of time, the consciousness of the excitation of nerve-cells; it has no parts and no unity. (Ed.) Feeling and volition are instances of Peirce's categories of First and Second, respectively. See [CP] I, VII. †8 What I call volition is the consciousness of the discharge of nerve-cells, either into the muscles, etc., or into other nerve-cells; it does not involve the sense of time (i.e. not of a continuum) but it does involve the sense of action and reaction, resistance, externality, otherness, pair-edness. It is the sense that something has hit me or that I am hitting something; it might be called the sense of collision or clash. It has an outward and an inward variety, corresponding to Kant's outer and inner sense, to will and self-control, to nerve-action and inhibition, to the two logical types A:B and A:A. The capital error of Hegel which permeates his whole system in every part of it is that he almost altogether ignores the Outward Clash. "We must be in contact with our subject-matter," says he in one place, whether it be by means of our external senses, or, what is better, by our profounder mind and our innermost self-consciousness. †9 Besides the lower consciousness of feeling and the higher consciousness of nutrition, this direct consciousness of hitting and of getting hit enters into all cognition and serves to make it mean something real. It is formal logic which teaches us this; not that of a Whateley or a Jevons, but formal logic in its new development, drawing nutriment from physiology and from history without leaving the solid ground of logical forms.
42. An objection different from that of Dr. Royce might be raised. Namely it might be asked how two different men can know they are speaking of the same thing. Suppose, for instance, one man should say a flash of lightning was followed by thunder and another should deny it. How would they know they meant the same flash? The answer is that they would compare notes somewhat as follows. One would say, "I mean that very brilliant flash which was preceded by three slight flashes, you know." The second man would recognize the mark, and thus by a probable and approximate inference they would conclude they meant the same flash.
43. Dr. Royce in describing the opinion of Thrasymachus has selected the expression "a barely possible judge." (Ed.) Italics not in [RAP]; cf. 41. †10 Is there not an ambiguity in this mode of speech which is unfair to Thrasymachus? The final opinion which would be sure to result from sufficient investigation may possibly, in reference to a given question, never be actually attained, owing to a final extinction of intellectual life or for some other reason. In that sense, this final judgment is not certain but only possible. But when Dr. Royce says "bare possibility is blank nothingness," (Ed.) [RAP] 430. †11 he would seem to be speaking of mere logical possibility, and not a possibility which differs but a hair's breadth from entire certainty. Let us consider what probability there is that a given question, say one capable of being answered by yes or no, will never get answered. Let us reason upon this matter by inductive logic. Dr. Royce and his school, I am well aware, consider inductive reasoning to be radically vicious; so that we unhappily cannot carry them along with us. (They often deny this, by the way, and say they rest entirely on experience. This is because they so overlook the Outward Clash, that they do not know what experience is. They are like Roger Bacon, who after stating in eloquent terms that all knowledge comes from experience, goes on to mention spiritual illumination from on high as one of the most valuable kinds of experiences.) But they will not succeed in exploding the method of modern science; and there is no reason why those who believe in induction at all, should not be willing to apply it to the subject now in hand. In the first place, then, upon innumerable questions, we have already reached the final opinion. How do we know that? Do we fancy ourselves infallible? Not at all; but throwing off as probably erroneous a thousandth or even a hundredth of all the beliefs established beyond present doubt, there must remain a vast multitude in which the final opinion has been reached. Every directory, guide-book, dictionary, history, and work of science is crammed with such facts. In the history of science, it has sometimes occurred that a really wise man has said concerning one question or another that there was reason to believe it never would be answered. The proportion of these which have in point of fact been conclusively settled very soon after the prediction has been surprisingly large. Our experience in this direction warrants us in saying with the highest degree of empirical confidence that questions that are either practical or could conceivably become so are susceptible of receiving final solutions provided the existence of the human race be indefinitely prolonged and the particular question excite sufficient interest. As for questions which have no conceivable practical bearings, as the question whether force is an entity, they mean nothing and may be answered as we like, without error. (Ed.) Pragmatism is treated in [CP] V. †12 We may take it as certain that the human race will ultimately be extirpated; because there is a certain chance of it every year, and in an indefinitely long time the chance of survival compounds itself nearer and nearer zero. But, on the other hand, we may take it as certain that other intellectual races exist on other planets, — if not of our solar system, then of others; and also that innumerable new intellectual races have yet to be developed; so that on the whole, it may be regarded as most certain that intellectual life in the universe will never finally cease. The problem whether a given question will ever get answered or not is not so simple; the number of questions asked is constantly increasing, and the capacity for answering them is also on the increase. If the rate of the latter increase is greater than that of the [former] the probability is unity that any given question will be answered; otherwise the probability is zero. Considerations too long to be explained here lead me to think that the former state of things is the actual one. In that case, there is but an infinitesimal proportion of questions which do not get answered, although the multitude of unanswered questions is forever on the increase. It plainly is not fair to call a judgment which is certain to be made a "barely possible" one. But I will admit (if the reader thinks the admission has any meaning, and is not an empty proposition) that some finite number of questions, we can never know which ones, will escape getting answered forever. Nor must I forget that I have not given the reader my proof that of the questions asked at any time the proportion that will never be answered is infinitesimal; so that he may be in doubt upon this point. That is not a thing to be regretted; for scepticism about the reality of things, — provided it be genuine and sincere, and not a sham, — is a healthful and growing stage of mental development. Let us suppose, then, for the sake of argument, that some questions eventually get settled, and that some others, indistinguishable from the former by any marks, never do. In that case, I should say that that conception of reality was rather a faulty one, for while there is a real so far as a question that will get settled goes, there is none for a question that will never be settled; for an unknowable reality is nonsense. The non-idealistic reader will start at this last assertion; but consider the matter from a practical point of view. You say that real things are manifested by their effects. True; for example, if the timbers of my house are inwardly rotting, it will some day fall down, and thus there will be a practical effect for me, whether I know the beams be rotten or not. Well, but if all the effects consistently point to the theory that the beams are rotting, it will come to be admitted at last that they are so; and if nothing is ever settled about the matter, it will be because the phenomena do not consistently point to any theory; and in that case there is a want of that "uniformity of nature" (to use a popular but very loose expression) which constitutes reality, and makes it differ from a dream. In that way, if we think that some questions are never going to get settled, we ought to admit that our conception of nature as absolutely real is only partially correct. Still, we shall have to be governed by it practically; because there is nothing to distinguish the unanswerable questions from the answerable ones, so that investigation will have to proceed as if all were answerable. In ordinary life, no matter how much we believe in questions ultimately getting answered, we shall always put aside an innumerable throng of them as beyond our powers. We shall not in our day seek to know whether the centre of the sun is distant from that of the earth by an odd or an even number of miles on the average; we shall act as if neither man nor God could ever ascertain it. There is, however, an economy of thought, in assuming that it is an answerable question. From this practical and economical point of view, it really makes no difference whether or not all questions are actually answered, by man or by God, so long as we are satisfied that investigation has a universal tendency toward the settlement of opinion; and this I conceive to be the position of Thrasymachus.
44. If there be any advantage to religion in supposing God to be omniscient, this sort of scepticism about reality can do no practical harm. We can still suppose that He knows all that there is of real to be known. On the theory of Dr. Royce, the real existence of God would consist in his imagining or positing Himself; it would thus be, according to him, of the same nature as the reality of anything else. For my part, I hold another theory, which I intend to take an early opportunity of putting into print. (Ed.) Cf. [CP] V, Book II, "Religion." †13 I think that the existence of God, as well as we can conceive of it consists in this, that a tendency toward ends is so necessary a constituent of the universe that the mere action of chance upon innumerable atoms has an inevitable teleological result. One of the ends so brought about is the development of intelligence and of knowledge; and therefore I should say that God's omniscience, humanly conceived, consists in the fact that knowledge in its development leaves no question unanswered. The scepticism just spoken of would admit this omniscience as a regulative but not a speculative conception. I believe that even that view is more religiously fruitful than the opinion of Dr. Royce.
§2. Comments on Royce's Philosophy
45. Let us now turn to the examination of Dr. Royce's peculiar method of reasoning; for that is always the most important element in every system of philosophy. His work is divided into a brief introduction and two books, the first entitled "The Search for a Moral Ideal"; the second "The Search for a Religious Truth." These titles seem to me to point, at the outset, to a fault of method. The pursuit of a conscience, if one hasn't one already, or of a religion, which is the subjective basis of conscience, seems to me an aimless and hypochondriac pursuit. If a man finds himself under no sense of obligation, let him congratulate himself. For such a man to hanker after a bondage to conscience, is as if a man with a good digestion should cast about for a regimen of food. A conscience, too, is not a theorem or a piece of information which may be acquired by reading a book; it must be bred in a man from infancy or it will be a poor imitation of the genuine article. If a man has a conscience, it may be an article of faith with him, that he should reflect upon that conscience, and thus it may receive a further development. But it never will do him the least good to get up a make-believe scepticism and pretend to himself not to believe what he really does believe. In point of fact, every man born and reared in a christian community, however little he may believe the dogmas of the Church, does find himself believing with the strongest conviction in the moral code of christendom. He has a horror of murder and incest, a disapproval of lying, etc., which he cannot escape from. The modern dialectician (if he will pardon a touch of exaggeration) would have such a man say to himself, Now I am going to be sceptical, but only provisionally so, in order to return to my faith with renewed conviction! But the whole history of thought shows that men cannot doubt at pleasure or merely because they find they have no positive reason for the belief they already hold. Reasons concern the man who is coming to believe, not the man who believes already. It has often been remarked that metaphysics is an imitation of mathematics; and it may be added that the philosophic doubt is an imitation of the absurd procedure of elementary geometry, which begins by giving worthless demonstrations of propositions nobody ever questions. When Hegel tells me that thought has three stages, that of naïve acceptance, that of reaction and criticism, and that of rational conviction; in a general sense, I agree to it. And a down-right living scepticism without arrière-pensée, may be beneficial. It is not perhaps easy to see why an imaginary scepticism might not sometimes serve the same purpose; but experience shows that in questions of magnitude men haven't imagination enough to put themselves in the true doubter's shoes. But be that as it may, the idea that the mere reaction of assent and doubt, the mere play of thought, the heat-lightning of the brain, is going to settle anything in this real world to which we appertain, — such an idea only shows again how the Hegelians overlook the facts of volitional action and reaction in the development of thought. I find myself in a world of forces which act upon me, and it is they and not the logical transformations of my thought which determine what I shall ultimately believe.
46. Dr. Royce seems to hold that at least in the philosophy of morals and religion a mere contemplation of our own crude beliefs will lead us to absolute scepticism and that then a mere contemplation of our own absolute scepticism will lead us back to rational conviction. Neither I nor the readers of the Popular Science Monthly can possibly believe that, in advance. But let us see how the method will work when applied to the discussion of ethics.
47. The moral stand-point from which every man with a christian training sets out, even if he be a dogmatic atheist, is pretty nearly the same. He has a horror of certain crimes and a disapproval of certain lesser sins. He is also more or less touched with the spirit of christian love, which he believes should be his beacon, and which in point of fact, by its power in his heart, shall and will govern him in all questions of disputed morals. More or less, in all of us, this sentiment replaces and abolishes conscience; like Huckleberry Finn, we act from christian charity without caring very much whether conscience approves of the act or not.
This is the state of mind of the ordinary man or woman who will open Dr. Royce's book. And now Dr. Royce proposes that this person shall ask himself the question, what validity or truth is there in the distinction of right and wrong. To me, it plainly appears that such a person, if he have a clear head, will at once reply, right and wrong are nothing to me except so far as they are connected with certain rules of living by which I am enabled to satisfy a real impulse which works in my heart; and this impulse is the love of my neighbor elevated into a love of an ideal and divine humanity which I identify with the providence that governs the world. But Dr. Royce says that different people will answer the question in different ways; some will take the position of the 'moral realist' and say that moral distinctions are founded on some matter of fact (say a decree from Sinai), while others will take the position of the 'moral idealist' and say that these distinctions are founded on an inward sentiment, — an ideal. (Ed.) [RAP] 21ff. †14 Two such persons come into collision; they find by mutual criticism that both positions are unsatisfactory; external fact can only determine what is, not what ought to be; while inward sentiment cannot be a resting-place, because it is only individual caprice and has no authority for another man. From this criticism the only outcome is ethical scepticism.
48. This is a fair specimen of Dr. Royce's logical method, which is a mere apotheosis of the dilemma, as the great instrument of thought. As compared with syllogistic method of the middle ages (which survives in certain quarters, yet) it is certainly wonderfully superior; but as compared with the mathematical reasoning upon which modern science is built, it is inefficacious and restricted.
49. In the particular case in hand, it appears to me that the ordinary christian does not find himself caught in Dr. Royce's dilemma at all. He is a moral idealist; yet far from being shaken by the spectacle of different men having different passions, he feels that every man may come to the same passion which animates him by a mere enlargement of his horizon, and that his is the only sentiment in which all others may be reconciled. For altruism is but a developed egoism; that same sensitiveness which in its lowest state is selfishness, first transforms itself into esprit de corps or collective selfishness; then, passing from feeling for others collectively to feeling for them individually, it becomes philanthropy, pity, sympathy tossed hither and thither rudderless on the ocean of human misery; finally, steadying itself by the conception of an ideal humanity and a divine providence, it passes into christian charity, which gathers up all selfishnesses and all pities and is ready to give each its due measure.
50. The author having stated the above argument with admirable clearness, fills a hundred pages with a perhaps not altogether necessary, though a charmingly written and highly interesting elaboration and illustration of it. He here passes in review a goodly number of the ethical theories which have been proposed at different times. After the Sophists, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, he criticizes what he conceives to be the ethics of Jesus. (Ed.) [RAP] Ch. III. †15 Every christian will tell him that he makes the mistake of viewing that as a theory or speculation which is really a spiritual experience; — another example of his neglect of the volitional element. For instance, he asks, "If I feel not the love of God, how prove to me that I ought to feel it?" (Ed.) [RAP] 48. The full statement in [RAP] is: "'If I feel not the love of God,' the objector will say, 'how prove to me that I ought to feel it?'" †16 The answer to that need not be pointed out.
51. In what he says about Herbert Spencer, he seems to forget that Mr. Spencer is not addressing a body of moral sceptics but readers animated by the sentiments which, in our day, animate every man who reads at all. (Ed.) [RAP] 82ff. †17
52. At last he takes up the thread of his argument as follows. The conflict between moral realism and idealism can only lead to moral scepticism. Now what is this scepticism? It is the contemplation of two opposing aims. Here he adduces the testimony of modern psychologists to show that we cannot think of willing without actually willing. (But for all that, I fancy I notice a difference sometimes in cold weather between thinking of willing to take my morning dash of cold water and actually willing to take it.) Scepticism, then, shares at once these opposing aims, or strives to share them. It has thus itself an aim, namely, to reconcile opposing aims. So absolute moral scepticism is self-destructive. "Possibly this result may be somewhat unexpected," (Ed.) [RAP] 138. †18 says our author. Not at all unexpected to one who does not believe in the dialectical method. You started with a hypochondriac hankering after an aim; and now you have acquired it. Eurekas! Well, what is it, this aim which you have at last got? Why, to have an aim! But that is nothing but the old nonsensical longing with which you set out. Like Kant's dove, you have been winging [in] a vacuum, without remarking that you never advanced an inch. I do not misrepresent the author. "For behold," he says, "made practical, brought down from its lonesome height, my Ideal very simply means the Will to direct my acts towards the attainment of universal Harmony." (Ed.) [RAP] 140-141. †19 But this, I must insist, was obviously implied in the original fantastic desire to have an aim. When I say that this is a fantastic desire, I do not of course mean to deny that there may be such an operation as the choice of an aim, if by that aim he meant a secondary or derived one; but I do say that it is absurd to speak of choosing an original and ultimate aim. That is something which, if you haven't it, you have nothing to do but wait till the grace of God confers it on you. I should think, however, that were it once admitted to be a rational performance to go ahunting for an ultimate aim or end, the first preliminary would be to recognize the axiom that such an end must have unity, after which the hunt might begin. But Royce, calling this axiom the 'ideal of ideals,' (Ed.) [RAP] 144. †20 as it certainly is, in a sense, exclaims 'Here I have the aim I wanted, and the hunt is over.' If one might be permitted to enliven a dry subject with a little folly, I should say that it reminded me of the surveyor Phoenix, who after purchasing 365 solar compasses and a vast amount of other paraphernalia, in order to ascertain the distance between San Francisco and the Mission of Dolores, stepped into a grocery and inquired how far it was, and returned "much pleased at so easily acquiring so much valuable information." If Dr. Royce merely means that it can be shown that a man who fancies he has no moral ideal really has one, I heartily grant it; and I will further admit that dialectic is the proper instrument to show this. But then a very lowly kind of dialectic will do; and a rather more definite ideal may be pointed out.
53. The rest of Book I is occupied, as it seems to me, with illicitly slipping some content into an empty formula. Much of this part of the book is splendidly said. But other passages seem to me to preach, in a way quite uncalled for by the premises, an ethics of the evil eye. "It is well that we should feel . . . joy whenever pride has a fall . . . . In all such ways . . . we must show no mercy." (Ed.) "Therefore it is well that we should feel not a selfish but a righteous joy whenever pride has a fall, whenever the man who thinks that he is something discovers of a truth that he is nothing . . . . In all such ways we must ask and we must show no mercy, save when these keen pains . . ." [RAP] 181-182. †21 "When the hedonist gives us his picture of a peaceful society, where, in the midst of [universal] good humor, his ideal, the happiness of everybody concerned, is steadfastly pursued, we find ourselves disappointed and contemptuous . . . . Who cares whether that [really] wretched set . . . think themselves happy or not?" (Ed.) [RAP] 187. The words in brackets are in [RAP], but were omitted by Peirce without notice. †22 "The appearance of anybody who pretends to be content with himself must be the signal not for admiration at the sight of his success, but for a good deal of contempt" (Ed.) ". . . whereas the rule of life for one's own person is simply to get all the satisfaction that one can, the appearance of anybody else who pretends to be content with himself must be the signal not for admiration at the sight of his success, but for a good deal of contempt." [RAP] 196-197. †23 etc. Some of the students to whom this ethics is taught at Harvard may upon reflection think that christian charity is not so much lower a frame of mind after all.
54. In Book II, Dr. Royce undertakes, by the same dialectic procedure to establish the existence of a God. Space does not permit me to enter into a criticism of the second book; nor is it necessary, for it consists only of an application of the same method to a subject to which dialectics is far less suited. Besides, to the reader who has had the kindness and the resolution to follow me to this point I can say, 'You are the man to enjoy Dr. Royce's own book, which I can promise you you shall find, in comparison with [the] harsh and crabbed matter you have been reading here, to be "as musical as is Apollo's lute."'
Chapter 4: William James, The Principles of Psychology
§1. Review in The Nation (Ed.) The review of William James's The Principles of Psychology (American Science Series, Advanced Course, Henry Holt and Company, 1890), 2 vols. Paragraphs 55-61, The Nation 53 (2 July 1891) 15; paragraphs 62-71, The Nation 53 (9 July 1891) 32-33. †1
55. Upon this vast work no definitive judgment can be passed for a long time; yet it is probably safe to say that it is the most important contribution that has been made to the subject for many years. Certainly it is one of the most weighty productions of American thought. The directness and sharpness with which we shall state some objections to it must be understood as a tribute of respect.
56. Beginning with the most external and insignificant characters, we cannot much admire it as a piece of bookmaking; for it misses the unity of an essay, and almost that of a connected series of essays, while not attaining the completeness of a thorough treatise. It is a large assortment of somewhat heterogeneous articles loosely tied up in one bag, with tendencies towards sprawling.
57. With an extraordinarily racy and forcible style, Prof. James is continually wresting words and phrases of exact import to unauthorized and unsuitable uses. He indulges himself with idiosyncrasies of diction and tricks of language such as usually spring up in households of great talent. To illustrate what we mean, we will open one of the volumes at random, and we come upon this: "A statement ad hominem meant as part of a reduction to the absurd." (Ed.) Vol. I, p. 368. †2 Now a reductio ad absurdum is a species of demonstration, and as such can contain no argumentum ad hominem, which is merely something a man is obliged by his personal interests to admit. On the next page, we read: "This dynamic (we had almost written dynamitic) way of representing knowledge." On the next page: "They talk as if, with this miraculous tying or 'relating,' the Ego's duties were done." It is the same with the technical terms of psychology. Speaking of certain theories, our author says they "carry us back to times when the soul as vehicle of consciousness was not discriminated, as it now is, from the vital principle presiding over the formation of the body." (Ed.) Vol. I, p. 215. †3 How can anybody write so who knows the technical meaning of vehicle? On the same page occurs this phrase, "If unextended, it is absurd to speak of its having space relations at all," which sounds like a general attack on the geometry of points.
58. Prof. James's thought is highly original, or at least novel; but it is originality of the destructive kind. To prove that we do not know what it has been generally supposed that we did know, that given premises do not justify the conclusions which all other thinkers hold they do justify, is his peculiar function. For this reason the book should have been preceded by an introduction discussing the strange positions in logic upon which all its arguments turn. Even when new theories are proposed, they are based on similar negative or sceptical considerations, and the one thing upon which Prof. James seems to pin his faith is the general incomprehensibility of things. He clings as passionately to that as the old lady of the anecdote did to her total depravity. Of course, he is materialistic to the core — that is to say, in a methodical sense, but not religiously, since he does not deny a separable soul nor a future life; for materialism is that form of philosophy which may safely be relied upon to leave the universe as incomprehensible as it finds it. It is possible that Prof. James would protest against this characterization of his cast of mind. Brought up under the guidance of an eloquent apostle of a form of Swedenborgianism, (Ed.) Cf. Peirce's review of a book by James's father on Swedenborg, [Bibliography] G-1870-2. †4 which is materialism driven deep and clinched on the inside, and educated to the materialistic profession, it can only be by great natural breadth of mind that he can know what materialism is, by having experienced some thoughts that are not materialistic. He inclines towards Cartesian dualism, which is of the true strain of the incomprehensibles and modern materialism's own mother. There is no form of idealism with which he will condescend to argue. Even evolutionism, which has idealistic affinities, seems to be held for suspect. It is his métier to subject to severe investigation any doctrine whatever which smells of intelligibility.
59. The keynote of this is struck in the preface, in these words:
"I have kept close to the point of view of natural science throughout the book. Every natural science assumes certain data uncritically, and declines to challenge the elements between which its own 'laws' obtain, and from which its deductions are carried on. Psychology, the science of finite individual minds, assumes as its data (1) thoughts and feelings, and (2) a physical world in time and space with which they coexist and which (3) they know. Of course these data themselves are discussable; but the discussion of them (as of other elements) is called metaphysics, and falls outside the province of this book. This book, assuming that thoughts and feelings exist, and are the vehicles of knowledge, thereupon contends that Psychology, when she has ascertained the empirical correlation of the various sorts of thought and feeling with definite conditions of the brain, can go no farther — can go no farther, that is, as a natural science. If she goes farther, she becomes metaphysical. All attempts to explain our phenomenally given thoughts as products of deeper-lying entities (whether the latter be named 'Soul,' 'Transcendental Ego,' 'Ideas,' or 'Elementary Units of Consciousness') are metaphysical. This book consequently rejects both the associationist and the spiritualist theories; and in this strictly positivistic point of view consists the only feature of it for which I feel tempted to claim originality." (Ed.) Vol. I, pp. v-vi. †5
60. This is certainly well put — considered as prestigiation. But when we remember that a natural science is not a person, and consequently does not "decline" to do anything, the argument evaporates. It is only the students of the science who can "decline," and they are not banded together to repress any species of inquiry. Each investigator does what in him lies; and declines to do a thousand things most pertinent to the subject. To call a branch of an inquiry "metaphysical" is merely a mode of objurgation, which signifies nothing but the author's personal distaste for that part of his subject. It does not in the least prove that considerations of that sort can throw no light on the questions he has to consider. Indeed, we suspect it might be difficult to show in any way that any two branches of knowledge should be allowed to throw no light on one another. Far less can calling one question scientific and another metaphysical warrant Prof. James in "consequently rejecting" certain conclusions, against which he has nothing better to object. Nor is it in the least true that physicists confine themselves to such a "strictly positivistic point of view." Students of heat are not deterred by the impossibility of directly observing molecules from considering and accepting the kinetical theory; students of light do not brand speculations on the luminiferous ether as metaphysical; and the substantiality of matter itself is called in question in the vortex theory, which is nevertheless considered as perfectly germane to physics. All these are "attempts to explain phenomenally given elements as products of deeper-lying entities." In fact, this phrase describes, as well as loose language can, the general character of scientific hypotheses.
61. Remark, too, that it is not merely nor chiefly the "soul" and the "transcendental ego" for which incomprehensibles he has some tenderness, that Prof. James proposes to banish from psychology, but especially ideas which their adherents maintain are direct data of consciousness. In short, not only does he propose, by the simple expedient of declaring certain inquiries extra-psychological, to reverse the conclusions of the science upon many important points, but also by the same negative means to decide upon the character of its data. Indeed, when we come to examine the book, we find it is precisely this which is the main use the author makes of his new principle. The notion that the natural sciences accept their data uncritically we hold to be a serious mistake. It is true, scientific men do not subject their observations to the kind of criticism practised by the high-flying philosophers, because they do not believe that method of criticism sound. If they really believed in idealism, they would bring it to bear upon physics as much as possible. But in fact they find it a wordy doctrine, not susceptible of any scientific applications. When, however, a physicist has to investigate, say, such a subject as the scintillation of the stars, the first thing he does is to subject the phenomena to rigid criticism to find whether these phenomena are objective or subjective, whether they are in the light itself, or arise in the eye, or in original principles of mental action, or in idiosyncrasies of the imagination, etc. The principle of the uncritical acceptance of data, to which Prof. James clings, practically amounts to a claim to a new kind of liberty of thought, which would make a complete rupture with accepted methods of psychology and of science in general. The truth of this is seen in the chief application that has been made of the new method, in the author's theory of space-perception. And into the enterprise of thus revolutionizing scientific method he enters with a light heart, without any exhaustive scrutiny of his new logic in its generality, relying only on the resources of the moment. He distinctly discourages a separate study of the method. "No rules can be laid down in advance. Comparative observations, to be definite, must usually be made to test some preëxisting hypothesis; and the only thing then is to use as much sagacity as you possess, and to be as candid as you can." (Ed.) Vol. I, p. 194. †6
— * —
62. We have no space for any analysis of the contents of this work, nor is that necessary, for everybody interested in the subject must and will read the book. It discusses most of the topics of psychology in an extremely unequal way, but always interesting and always entertaining. We will endeavor to give a fair specimen of the author's critical method (for the work is essentially a criticism and exposition of critical principles), with a running commentary, to aid a judgment. For this purpose we will select a short section entitled "Is Perception Unconscious Inference?" (Ed.) Vol. II, pp. 111-114. Cf. 5.115, 5.181ff. †7 Perception in its most characteristic features is, of course, a matter of association in a wide sense of that term. If two spots of light are thrown upon the wall of a dark room so as to be adjacent, and one of these is made red while the other remains white, the white one will appear greenish by contrast. If they are viewed through a narrow tube, and this is moved so that the red spot goes out of view, still the white one will continue to look green. But if the red light, now unseen, be extinguished and we then remove the tube from the eye, so as to take a new look, as it were, the apparent greenness will suddenly vanish. This is an example of a thousand phenomena which have led several German psychologists to declare that the process of perception is one of reasoning in a generalized sense of that term.
63. It is possible some of the earlier writers held it to be reasoning, strictly speaking. But most have called it "unconscious inference," and unconscious inference differs essentially from inference in the narrow sense, all our control over which depends upon this, that it involves a conscious, though it may be an indistinct, reference to a genus of arguments. These German writers must also not be understood as meaning that the perceptive process is any more inferential than are the rest of the processes which the English have so long explained by association — a theory which until quite recently played little part in German psychology. The German writers alluded to explain an ordinary suggestion productive of belief, or any cognition tantamount to belief, as inference conscious or unconscious, as a matter of course. As German writers are generally weak in their formal logic, they would be apt to formulate the inference wrongly; but the correct formulation is as follows:
64. A well-recognized kind of object, M, has for its ordinary predicates P1, P2, P3, etc., indistinctly recognized.
The suggesting object, S, has these same predicates, P1, P2, P3, etc.
Hence, S is of the kind M.
65. This is hypothetic inference in form. The first premise is not actually thought, though it is in the mind habitually. This, of itself, would not make the inference unconscious. But it is so because it is not recognized as an inference; the conclusion is accepted without our knowing how. In perception, the conclusion has the peculiarity of not being abstractly thought, but actually seen, so that it is not exactly a judgment, though it is tantamount to one. The advantage of this method of explaining the process is conceived to be this: To explain any process not understood is simply to show that it is a special case of a wider description of process which is more intelligible. Now nothing is so intelligible as the reasoning process. This is shown by the fact that all explanation assimilates the process to be explained to reasoning. Hence, the logical method of explaining the process of association is looked upon as the most perfect explanation possible. It certainly does not exclude the materialistic English explanation by a property of the nerves. The monist school, to which the modern psychologists mostly belong, conceives the intellectual process of inference and the process of mechanical causation to be only the inside and outside views of the same process. But the idealistic tendency, which tinctures almost all German thought not very recent, would be to regard the logical explanation as the more perfect, under the assumption that the materialistic explanation requires itself ultimately to be explained in terms of the reasoning process. But Prof. James is naturally averse to the logical explanation. Let us see, then, how he argues the point. His first remark is as follows:
"If every time a present sign suggests an absent reality to our mind, we make an inference; and if every time we make an inference, we reason, then perception is indubitably reasoning."
66. Of course, every psychological suggestion is regarded as of the general nature of inference, but only in a far more general sense than that in which perception is so called. This should be well known to Prof. James, and he would have dealt more satisfactorily with his readers if he had not kept it back. Namely, perception attains a virtual judgment, it subsumes something under a class, and not only so, but virtually attaches to the proposition the seal of assent — two strong resemblances to inference which are wanting in ordinary suggestions. However, Prof. James admits that the process is inference in a broad sense. What, then, has he to object to [in] the theory under consideration?
67.
"Only one sees no room in it for any unconscious part. Both associates, the present sign and the contiguous things which it suggests, are above board, and no intermediary ideas are required."
Here are two errors. In the first place, "unconscious inference" does not, either with other logicians or with the advocates of the theory in question, mean an inference in which any proposition or term of the argument is unconscious, any more than "conscious inference" implies that both premises are conscious. But unconscious inference means inference in which the reasoner is not conscious of making an inference. He may be conscious of the premise, but he is not conscious that his acceptance of the conclusion is inferential. He does not make that side-thought which enters into all inference strictly so called: "and so it would be in every analogous case (or in most cases.)" There is no doubt, therefore, that ordinary suggestion, regarded as inference, is of the unconscious variety. But Prof. James further forgets his logic in hinting, what he soon expresses more clearly, that such an inference is to be regarded as a mere "immediate inference," because it has no middle term. We might suppose he had never heard of the modus ponens, the form of which, A and B being any proposition, is
If A, then B;
But A:
Hence, B.
Those who think a light is thrown upon the ordinary process of suggestion by assimilating it to reasoning, assimilate it to the modus ponens. The proposition "If A, then B," is represented by the association itself, which is not present to consciousness, but exists in the mind in the form of a habit, as all beliefs and general propositions do. The second premise A is the suggesting idea, the conclusion B is the suggested idea.
68. Already quite off the track, our author now plunges into the jungle in this fashion:
"Most of those who have upheld the thesis in question have, however, made a more complex supposition. What they have meant is that perception is a mediate inference, and that the middle term is unconscious. When the sensation which I have called 'this' is felt, they think that some process like the following runs through the mind:
'This' is M;
but M is A;
therefore 'this' is A."
Those who have upheld the thesis are not in dispute among themselves, as represented. They make no supposition throughout not admitted by all the world. To represent any process of inference now as a modus ponens, now as a syllogism with a middle term, is not necessarily taking antagonistic views. As for the syllogism given, it is the weakest mode of supporting the thesis, far more open to attack than the form first given above. But Prof. James makes no headway, even against this. He says:
"Now there seems no good grounds for supposing this additional wheelwork in the mind. The classification of 'this' as M is itself an act of perception, and should, if all perception were inference, require a still earlier syllogism for its performance, and so backwards ad infinitum."
69. Not one of the authors whom we have consulted makes the M entirely unconscious; but Prof. James says they do. If so, when he insists that "this is M" is an act of perception, he must mean some ultra-Leibnitzian unconscious perception! Has he ever found the German authors maintaining that that kind of perception is inferential? If not, where is his regressus ad infinitum? What those authors do say is that M, and with it the two premises, are thrown into the background and shade of consciousness; that "this is M" is a perception, sometimes in the strict sense, sometimes only in that sense in which perception embraces every sensation. They do not hold sensation to be inferential, and consequently do not suppose a regressus ad infinitum. But even if they did, there would be no reductio ad absurdum, since it is well known to mathematicians that any finite interval contains an infinite number of finite intervals; so that supposing there is no finite limit to the shortness of time required for an intellectual process, an infinite number of them, each occupying a finite time, may be crowded into any time, however short.
70. The Professor concludes:
"So far, then, from perception being a species of reasoning, properly so called, both it and reasoning are coördinate varieties of that deeper sort of process known psychologically as the association of ideas, and — "
We break the sentence, which goes on to something else, in order to remark that "a species of reasoning properly so called" must be a slip of the pen. For otherwise there would be an ignoratio elenchi; nobody ever having claimed that perception is inference in the strict sense of conscious inference. Instead of "a species of reasoning properly so called," we must read "reasoning in a generalized sense." Remembering also that Prof. James began by insisting on extending the controversy to association in general, we may put association in place of perception, and thus the conclusion will be, "so far from association being reasoning in a generalized sense, reasoning is a special kind of association." Who does not see that to say that perception and reasoning are coördinate varieties of association, is to say something in entire harmony with the thesis which Prof. James is endeavoring to combat? To resume:
71.
"— physiologically as the law of habit in the brain. To call perception unconscious reasoning is thus either a useless metaphor or a positively misleading confusion between two different things."
Here the section ends, and in these last words, for the first time in the whole discussion, the real question at issue is at length touched, and it is dismissed with an ipse dixit. There is no room for doubt that perception and, more generally, associative suggestion, may truthfully be considered as inference in a generalized sense; the only question is whether there is any use in so considering them. Had Prof. James succeeded in establishing his regressus ad infinitum, he would have refuted himself effectually, since it would then have been shown that an important consequence, not otherwise known, had been drawn from the theory. As it is, he says nothing pertinent either pro or con. But a little before, when an unconscious predication was called perception, was this perception "properly so called"? And if not, was calling it by that name a "useless metaphor," or was it a "positively misleading confusion between two different things"?
§2. Questions on William James' The Principles of Psychology (Ed.) "Questions on William James's Principles of Psychology," Widener IC1a. This manuscript is dated c.1891 since it was probably written when Peirce composed his review (see 55n1). The questions are numbered from 1 to 44, with two questions bearing the number 40. All the questions concern Vol. I of the two volume work; where necessary, the editor has inserted in brackets the relevant passages. The questions published here are on the following chapters: 3 and 5 are on Ch. II, "The Functions of the Brain"; 12 and 14, Ch. V, "The Automaton-Theory"; 21, 22, 23, 29, and 30, Ch. VIII, "The Relations of Minds to other Things"; and 31, 32, 33, 36, 41, and 42, Ch. IX, "The Stream of Thought." [Bibliography] M-14a quotes some of the questions not printed here. †8
72. Qu: 3 p. 66. "The cortex is the sole organ of consciousness in man." The reasoning seems pretty loose for settling all the important positions implied in this statement. What is consciousness anyway?
73. Qu: 5 p. 80. Is not the conscious element of any conception, — as Kant would say, its matter, — pretty accidental and unimportant? It must, no doubt, be there, but will not anything there do? Shall we not take tongue sensations as the skeleton or corpus of our conception of language, etc.?
74. Qu: 12 p. 137. ["Psychology is a mere natural science, accepting certain terms uncritically as her data, and stopping short of metaphysical reconstruction. Like physics, she must be naïve; and if she finds that in her very peculiar field of study ideas seem to be causes, she had better continue to talk of them as such. She gains absolutely nothing by a breach with common-sense in this matter, and she loses, to say the least, all naturalness of speech."] Had physics taken the course you wish psychology to take would she not have stuck to the idea of explaining everything by hot and cold, moist and dry? Is not the lesson of physics rather not to attack the most difficult problems first?
75. Qu: 14 p. 144. ["But if pleasures and pains have no efficacy, one does not see (without some such à priori rational harmony as would be scouted by the 'scientific' champions of the automaton-theory) why the most noxious acts, such as burning, might not give thrills of delight, and the most necessary ones, such as breathing, cause agony."] Why would it not be equally logical to say, "if pleasures and pains have no efficacy, one does not see why men should not shun the pleasurable as much as the painful." But the obvious answer would be, because, as this fact shows, pleasure and pain are more than pure monadic feelings. Is not this the answer to the question that is put?
76. Qu: 21 p. 215. ["The truth is that if the thinking principle is extended we neither know its form nor its seat; whilst if unextended, it is absurd to speak of its having any space-relations at all. Space-relations we shall see hereafter to be sensible things. The only objects that can have mutual relations of position are objects that are perceived coexisting in the same felt space. A thing not perceived at all, such as the inextended soul must be, cannot coexist with any perceived objects in this way. No lines can be felt stretching from it to the other objects. It can form no terminus to any space-interval. It can therefore in no intelligible sense enjoy position. Its relations cannot be spatial, but must be exclusively cognitive or dynamic, as we have seen. So far as they are dynamic, to talk of the soul being 'present' is only a figure of speech. Hamilton's doctrine that the soul is present to the whole body is at any rate false: for cognitively its presence extends far beyond the body, and dynamically it does not extend beyond the brain."] The two centres of gyration of a reversible pendulum are unextended points. No lines can be felt stretching from them to other objects. They form no termini to any space-interval. Will you then say they "can have no mutual relations of position," or that "in no intelligible sense can they 'enjoy' position"?
77. Qu: 22 p. 215. Is anything "present" in space except in the sense of being in dynamic reaction with other objects in space? If so, in what does the figure of speech consist?
78. Qu: 23 p. 215. There is an attempt in the last sentence of the text of this page (and the idea has been vaguely running along) to establish a great contrast between the mode of the mind's cognitive reactions with things and its dynamic reactions. The former is direct, or there is, at least, no sense in calling it indirect. The latter is direct only with the brain, and mainly indirect. Is this tenable? The soul reacts dynamically with the future, cognitively with the past. Both are mediate. In the immediate present, volition and experience are indistinguishable, are they not? What is the distinction that can exist in that instant? If I am right here, is there not a pretty accurate correspondence between our dealings with the Future and the Past, as far as mediacy is concerned, at any rate?
79. Qu: 29 p. 222. ["Through feelings we become acquainted with things, but only by our thoughts do we know about them. Feelings are the germ and starting point of cognition, thoughts the developed tree."] "Through feelings we become acquainted with things." This seems to me to be at the root of a good deal of bad metaphysics. On the contrary, the feelings are matters of indifference (in their qualities). It is by the reactions of ourselves upon things and of their parts on one another that we become acquainted with things, as it seems to me.
80. Qu: 30 p. 222. Is this classification of "mental states" as feelings and thoughts sufficiently scientific? Is it not better to adopt the logical division not of "mental states" but of mental elements, into feeling-qualities, reactions (volition and experience), and habit-taking?
81. Qu: 31 p. 226. "No thought even comes into direct sight of a thought in another personal consciousness than its own. Absolute insulation, irreducible pluralism, is the law." Is not the direct contrary nearer observed facts? Is not this pure metaphysical speculation? You think there must be such isolation, because you confound thoughts with feeling-qualities; but all observation is against you. There are some small particulars that a man can keep to himself. He exaggerates them and his personality sadly.
82. Qu: 32 p. 226. ["It seems as if the elementary psychic fact were not thought or this thought or that thought, but my thought, every thought being owned. Neither contemporaneity, nor proximity in space, nor similarity of quality and content are able to fuse thoughts together which are sundered by this barrier of belonging to different personal minds. The breaches between such thoughts are the most absolute breaches in nature. Everyone will recognize this to be true, so long as the existence of something corresponding to the term 'personal mind' is all that is insisted on, without any particular view of its nature being implied. On these terms the personal self rather than the thought might be treated as the immediate datum in psychology."] Everybody will admit a personal self exists in the same sense in which a snark exists; that is, there is a phenomenon to which that name is given. It is an illusory phenomenon; but still it is a phenomenon. It is not quite purely illusory, but only mainly so. It is true, for instance, that men are selfish, that is, that they are really deluded into supposing themselves to have some isolated existence; and in so far, they have it. To deny the reality of personality is not anti-spiritualistic; it is only anti-nominalistic. It is true that there are certain phenomena, really quite slight and insignificant, but exaggerated, because they are connected with the tongue, which may be described as personality. The agility of the tongue is shown in its insisting that the world depends upon it. The phenomena of personality consist mainly in ability to hold the tongue. This is what the tongue brags so about. (Ed.) Cf. 5.313ff. †9
83. But all this business will appear dark and mysterious until the three categories are mastered and applied. (Ed.) The psychological versions of Peirce's categories of First, Second, and Third are discussed in 7.524-538, and the categories in general are treated in [CP] I. See also 5.290. †10
84. Meantime, physicians are highly privileged that they can ask to see people's tongues; for this is inspecting the very organ of personality. It is largely because this organ is so sensitive that personality is so vivid. But it is more because it is so agile and complex a muscle. Its muscular habits are the basis of personality, which need not be lodged in the brain. The inhibition however which makes the strong personality comes from some exterior ganglion, no doubt.
85. This is a specimen of how other "thoughts" ought to be conceived. They are readily adoptable habits, taken, lost, replaced continually, and felt, no matter how. Mostly no doubt lodged in nerve matter, but not necessarily so.
86. The cases of double personality show that the cunning right hand can in a measure replace the tongue. But till a personality can control the tongue, it is very obscure. The principal personality resides there. Its superiority is shown by this that if cut out the person soon gets along and talks very well, with the remaining fragments. Farmers sometimes slit the tongues of self milking cows. But they soon learn to make use of the slit tongue just the same. So if a man's right hand is cut off, it is marvellous how much he can do with the stump. But the hand altogether lacks the extreme subtilty of the tongue. The school-boy writes with his tongue. That is the tongue teaching the fingers language. Some people roll up their tongues, or bite them, or shove them down when they do something sly or tricky. Some people stick them into their cheeks. These are the gestures of pure egotism. The tobacco chewer shifts his quid when he betrays his vanity.
All animals capable of domestication have good tongues.
87. Qu: 33 p. 231. ["Are not the sensations we get from the same object, for example, always the same? Does not the same piano-key, struck with the same force, make us hear in the same way? Does not the same grass give us the same feeling of green, the same sky the same feeling of blue, and do we not get the same olfactory sensation no matter how many times we put our nose to the same flask of cologne? It seems a piece of metaphysical sophistry to suggest that we do not; and yet a close attention to the matter shows that there is no proof that the same bodily sensation is ever got by us twice.
"What is got twice is the same OBJECT. We hear the same note over and over again; we see the same quality of green, or smell the same objective perfume, or experience the same species of pain."] Is it not plain that two feelings cannot be compared as they are as pure feelings? If so can a "likeness" between two feelings possibly consist in anything but their being naturally associated? That granted, is it not certain that feelings ever so much alike do, in that only possible sense, recur? As for sameness, this is a relation which by its nature is restricted to individuals. Feelings are in so far the same as they are alike.
88. Qu: 36 p. 235. I should be glad to know what possible relevancy all that has been so skillfully said about the total states of mind, that its commonplace is forgotten, has with the proposition that no two ideas can ever be exactly the same. This seems perfectly absurd. The essence of thought lies in the law of relationship that it implies. Do you mean to say that I never can have again my present view of the essence of the system of whole numbers? That is what it means to say I have the same idea I had yesterday.
89. Qu: 41 p. 243. ["Let us call the resting-places the 'substantive parts,' and the places of flight the 'transitive parts,' of the stream of thought. It then appears that the main end of our thinking is at all times the attainment of some other substantive part than the one from which we have just been dislodged. And we may say that the main use of the transitive parts is to lead us from one substantive conclusion to another."] This is one of the finest, if not the finest, passage in the whole book. It is a direful pity the author could not have sufficient acquaintance with the history of words, and of knowledge of their importance, to avoid two of the most objectionable terms he could possibly have selected, for the trade marks of his invention. Why could he not have said "transitory" (Ed.) This word is not clearly legible in the manuscript. Cf. [Perry] II, 413-416. †11 instead of taking a word already over burdened with ambiguities. Not that still better terms might not have been discovered. As for "substantive," it wouldn't have been much worse if he had called it "absolute." . . .
90. Qu: 42 p. 244. ["Let anyone try to cut a thought across in the middle and get a look at its section, and he will see how difficult the introspective observation of the transitive tracts is. The rush of the thought is so headlong that it almost always brings us up at the conclusion before we can arrest it."] To cut a thought across and look at the section requires no introspection. It is one of the principal methods in mathematics, which is in no degree introspective. Treating operations as quantities is one of a hundred familiar examples.
Chapter 5: On Non-Euclidean Geometry (Ed.) Paragraphs 91-96 are the review of Nicholaus Lobatchewsky's Geometrical Researches on the Theory of Parallels (translated by George Bruce Halsted, Austin, 1891), The Nation 54(11 Feb 1892)116, with an added quotation in 93n2. Paragraphs 97-99 are from an undated manuscript, "The Non Euclidean Geometry made Easy," Widener IA-2. Cf. 1.130, 3.134n1, 3.557. †1
91. Lobachevski's little book, 'Geometrische Untersuchungen,' marks an epoch in the history of thought, that of the overthrow of the axioms of geometry. The philosophical consequences of this are undoubtedly momentous, and there are thinkers who hold that it must lead to a new conception of nature, less mechanical than that which has guided the steps of science since Newton's discovery. The book has been published many years — in fact, the essence of it was set forth before 1830; so long does it take a pure idea to make its way, unbacked by any interest more aggressive than the love of truth. In this case, the idea is lucid, easy, and convincing. Nobody with enough mathematical capacity to be able to understand the first book of geometry need fear the least difficulty in mastering Lobachevski's tract; and really it is high time that every thinking man and woman should know what is in it.
92. In the pre-Lobachevskian days, elementary geometry was universally regarded as the very exemplar of conclusive reasoning carried to great lengths. It had been the ideal of speculative thinkers in all ages. Metaphysics, indeed, as an historical fact, has been nothing but an attempt to copy, in thinking about substances, the geometer's reasoning about shapes. This is shown by the declarations of Plato and others, by the spatial origin of many metaphysical conceptions and of the terms appropriated to them, such as abstract, form, analogy, etc., and by the love of donning the outer clothing of geometry, even when no fit for philosophy. For instance, one of the remarkable features of geometry is the small number of premises from which galaxies of theorems result; and accordingly it has been an effort of almost all metaphysicians to reduce their first principles to the fewest possible, even if they had to crowd disparate thoughts into one formula. It did not seem to occur to them that since a list of first principles is a work of analysis, it would not be a small number of elementary propositions so much as a large number that would bespeak its thoroughness. Admiration for the elements of geometry was not, however, confined to metaphysicians. Euclid's treatise was acknowledged by all kinds of minds to be all but absolutely perfect in its reasoning, and the very type of what science should aim at as to form and matter.
93. In the empyrean of geometry there was but one little speck — the theory of parallels. Euclid had had a difficulty in proving the sum of the angles of a triangle to be not less than two right angles. His treatment of the subject betrays a very profound study of it; for instead of slipping over the difficulty unaware, as forty-nine out of fifty mathematicians would have done, instead of even bringing the necessary assumption to a persuasive shape, he takes as his fifth postulate (or 11th axiom, in incorrect editions) a proposition that begs the question in the frankest manner — namely, if two straight lines in a plane are met by a third making the sum of the inner angles on one side of this third less than two right angles, then these two lines will meet on that side if sufficiently produced. Innumerable attempts were made to demonstrate this; but, at length, the efforts of Legendre and others made it pretty clear that this proposition could be deduced only from some other nearly equivalent. The least unsatisfactory assumption ever proposed was that of Playfair, that if of three unlimited straight lines lying in one plane two intersect, the third must cross one or both. It was at this point that Lobachevski cut the knot by supposing Euclid's postulate untrue, and showing that the result was a perfectly consistent system of geometry which may, for all we can yet observe, be the system of nature. (Ed.) Peirce worked on the problem of determining which geometry holds of physical space. ". . . the physical geometry of celestial triangles needs examination, in order to ascertain whether the constant of space may not have a sensible magnitude. I have undertaken such an examination. I began by forming a list of all possible methods of determining this quantity by means of the following observations: 1st, the parallaxes of stars; 2nd, the numbers of stars of each parallax; 3rd, the proper motions of stars; 4th, the numbers of stars of different proper motions; 5th, the spectroscopic determinations of the motions of stars in the line of sight; 6th, the magnitudes of stars; 7th, the numbers of stars of each magnitude. My list of possible methods was long. All of them, it is true, involved some hypothetical element; but that is true of any research, whatever, into the value of a physical quantity; and it is possible so to modify the methods that the hypotheses that appear the most dangerous may probably be eliminated. I applied several methods: they seemed to indicate a hyperbolic space with a constant far from insignificant." From an undated fragment, Widener IA-7. †2 All this time, Euclid's proof (Elements, Bk. I., props. 16 and 17) of what substantially amounts to the proposition, that the sum of the three angles of a triangle is not greater than two right angles, was regarded as perfect. It was not till 1854 that Riemann first discovered that, though accepted for two thousand years as conclusive (and it stands to-day unchanged in almost all the text-books), this pretended proof is really quite fallacious. It is plain that it is so, because it uses no premises not as true in the case of spherical as in that of plane triangles; and yet the conclusion drawn from those premises is known to be false of spherical triangles. (Ed.) Cf. The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements, edited by Thomas L. Heath, Second Edition (Dover, 1956), Vol. I, p. 280. †3
94. The truth is, that elementary geometry, instead of being the perfection of human reasoning, is riddled with fallacies, and is thoroughly unmathematical in its method of development. It has in some measure confused all mathematics, by leaving unnoticed most of the really fundamental propositions, while raising to an undue rank certain others almost arbitrarily selected. It leads young men into bad logical ways; and it causes pupil and teacher to think that whoever has difficulty with this sophisticated logic is wanting in aptitude for the apprehension of mathematics. The study of geometry ought to begin with the theory of perspective. Let a man be supposed to stand on an unbroken sandy plain. Let him fix a needle upon a post, and set up a plate of glass in a steady position, and draw a perspective picture upon the glass by placing his eye so as to bring the needle-point over each point in the sand to be represented and marking it on the glass in the same line of sight. The horizon is where the lines of sight just skim the surface of the rounded earth. These lines of sight form a cone, and their perspective representation will be the section of this cone by the plane of the glass. But for simplicity let it be supposed that the earth is flat and indefinitely extended, so that the plain is also a plane, and an unbounded one. Then every straight line in the sand will have a straight line for its picture, for all the lines of sight from the needle-point to points in that straight line will lie in one plane; and this plane will cut the plane of the glass in a straight line.
95. Lobachevski and Riemann cast no manner of doubt upon the geometry of perspective, so far as this is confined to questions of incidence and coincidence. But when it comes to the measurement of distances and angles, their objections begin. According to the Euclidean notions, the infinitely distant parts of an unbounded plane would be represented in perspective by a straight horizon or vanishing line. But Lobachevski says we cannot be sure that this line would be straight, that maybe it would be a hyperbola like the perspective of the terrestrial horizon; and, in fact, the straight line being only a special case of the hyperbola, it is proper to say that such is its form. Riemann, however, points out that we cannot even be sure there would be any such line at all, for we cannot be sure that space has any infinitely distant parts, since it may be that if we were to move off in any direction in a straight line, we might find that, after traversing a sufficient distance, we had got around to our starting-point again.
96. Prof. Halsted's translation (which, while our notice has been waiting, has reached, we are glad to see, a fourth edition) is excellent; his useful bibliography of non-Euclidean geometry was already well known. We could only wish there were a more copious appendix. The work of Lobachevski, though simple and convincing, is not what would now be considered a scientific presentation of the subject, and is open to a good deal of criticism. A new synthetic exposition is much needed, and might well accompany a collection of the contributions of Lobachevski, Bolyai, Riemann, Cayley, Klein, and Clifford.
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97. We have an opinion or natural idea of space, which by some kind of evolution has come to be very closely in accord with observations. But we find in regard to our natural ideas, in general, that while they do accord in some measure with fact, they by no means do so to such a point that we can dispense with correcting them by comparison with observations.
98. Given a line CD and a point O. Our natural (Euclidean) notion is that
1st there is a line AB through O in the plane OCD which will not meet CD at any finite distance from O.
2nd that if any line A'B' or A''B'' through O in the plane OCD be inclined by any finite angle, however small, to AB, it will meet CD at some finite distance from O.
99. Is this natural notion exactly true?
A. This is not certain.
B. We have no probable reason to believe it so.
C. We never can have positive evidence lending it any degree of likelihood. It may be disproved in the future.
D. It may be true, perhaps. But since the chance of this is as 1:∞ or 0/1, the logical presumption is, and must ever remain, that it is not true.
E. If there is some influence in evolution tending to adapt the mind to nature, it would probably not be completed yet. And we find other natural ideas require correction. Why not this, too? Thus, there is some reason to think this natural idea is not exact.
F. I have a theory which fits all the facts as far as I can compare them, which would explain how the natural notion came to be so closely approximate as it is, and how space came to have the properties we find it has. According to this theory, this natural notion would not be exact.
To give room for the non-Euclidean geometry, it is sufficient to admit the first of these propositions.
Chapter 6: Josiah Royce, The World and the Individual
§1. First Series: The Four Historical Conceptions of Being (Ed.) Paragraphs 100-107 are the review of Josiah Royce's The World and the Individual: Gifford Lectures delivered before the University of Aberdeen, First Series: The Four Historical Conceptions of Being (Macmillan, 1900, 588 pp.), The Nation 70 (5 April 1900) 267. Paragraphs 108-116 are a review of the same work, Widener IV, dated c.1900 on the basis of the dates of the book and the published review. †1
100. We can do no more than explain in untechnical language what this important book is about. Its purpose is to say what it is that we aim at when we make any inquiry or investigation — not what our ulterior purpose may be, nor yet what our special effort is in any particular case, but what the direct and common aim of all search for knowledge is. This is a question of fact. Prof. Royce has clothed the matter in such academical guise that a reader untrained in philosophy might suppose it was a mere dispute about a definition, and therefore a profitless discussion; but, stripping off technicalities, we find this question of fact beneath them.
101. The only opinion on this subject generally held at this day that Prof. Royce considers to be essentially different from his own, is one which may be attributed to Bishop Berkeley more justly than to any other individual. It is the opinion of Possible Experience. Though this has taken slightly different shapes with different thinkers, it will suffice, in order to explain the purport of Prof. Royce's book, to state it in one of its forms. The answer, then, generally given, or virtually given, to the question what any inquiry is instituted for, is approximately that it is intended to settle doubt on the subject. Did Sir Philip Francis write the Junius letters? I can imagine, as the handwriting experts say, that he did. I can imagine, as most of the recent inquirers say, that he did not. I feel no compulsion to attach either idea to my mental representation of the historic world. There are some images which I am forced, whether I would or no, to attach to mental objects — such as a dark skin and jealousy to Othello. The course of life has developed certain compulsions of thought which we speak of collectively as Experience. Moreover, the inquirer more or less vaguely identifies himself in sentiment with a Community of which he is a member, and which includes, for example, besides his momentary self, his self of ten years hence; and he speaks of the resultant cognitive compulsions of the course of life of that community as Our Experience. He says "we" find that terrestrial bodies have a component acceleration towards the earth of 980 centimetres per second, though neither he nor many of his acquaintances have ever made the experiment.
102. Now, such being his state of mind, two hopes motive his inquiry: the first is, that the course of "our" experience may ultimately compel the attachment of a settled idea to the mental subject of the inquiry; and the second is, that the inquiry itself may compel him to think that he anticipates what that destined ultimate idea is to be. (Ed.) Cf. 5.357. †2
103. Such, approximately, is the ordinary opinion of Possible Experience, in one of its modes of statement. According to it every inquiry is directed toward the resultant of certain compulsions; and, therefore, so far as a sense of compulsion is an immediate knowledge of something outside of self, exerting a brute force on self, this opinion is that every inquiry relates to a brute something without the mind. It was substantially on this ground that Kant opposed the anti-materialism of Berkeley. But, regarded from another side, this opinion is that the only object to which inquiry seeks to make our opinion conform is itself something of the nature of thought; namely, it is the predestined ultimate idea, which is independent of what you, I, or any number of men may persist, for however long, in thinking, yet which remains thought, after all. The whole course of life within which the experiential compulsions appear is a purely psychical development. For the gist of the opinion is that the flow of time consists in a continual assimilation into "our" inwardness, the Past, of a non-ego that is nothing but the ego that is to be — the Future. The Past acts upon the Future intelligibly, logically. But those blind compulsions are glimpses of an unknown object. Now, the unknown, according to this theory, is nothing but what is bound, as our hope is, to emerge in the future. Those blind compulsions, then, can be regarded as actions of the future on the past. From that point of view, it is seen that they can but be brute and blind, and, further, that in the course of time they must be seen to rationalize themselves and fall into place as the cognition develops.
104. To Prof. Royce's thinking, this opinion is unsatisfactory. He finds four faults with it, and sets them before us with his own argumentative lucidity and admirable mastery of the subject. Of the nature of three of them — that the opinion under examination makes the object of knowledge to be no more than a "would-be"; that its "experience" is no experience for an inquirer; that it seats an abstraction on a throne of reality — we can here find room for no clearer hint than those phrases may convey. Whatever solid skeleton the three objections may clothe is pretty much the same as that of the fourth and strongest, that if the non-ego to which the inquirer seeks to make his ideas conform is merely an idea in the future, that future idea must have for its object an idea future to it, and so on ad infinitum. There is no escaping the admission that the ultimate end of inquiry — the essential, not ulterior end — the mould to which we endeavor to shape our opinions, cannot itself be of the nature of an opinion. Could it be realized, it would rather be like an insistent image, not referring to anything else, and in that sense concrete. Passing from the consideration of a single inquiry to that of the aggregate of all possible inquiries, the phantom ultimate issue of them all would be the real universe. To be that, however, it must include the mental world as well as the physical, and must set forth to itself all laws and modes of conception. It must, above all, exhibit to itself the whole course of time, with that process of complete rationalization of ideas upon the assumption of which the very hypothesis of a fated ultimate destination of opinion is based. It must, therefore, be conceived as a perfect rational consciousness. In short, it is such a conception of Deity (necessarily a one-sided one) as considerations limited to the Theory of Cognition could reasonably be expected to yield.
105. This inevitable outcome of the doctrine of Possible Experience is the very same goal, roughly speaking, to which Prof. Royce's explorations have brought him, too, by a path nearly parallel to that for which we have set up a sign-post for whoever may care to follow it out, though the hedgerows of thought may prevent the traveller over the one from being aware how close he is to the other. Prof. Royce reaches his conclusion by analyzing the nature of the purpose of an idea. Now this same conception of the purpose of an idea ought equally to be seized as the guiding thread to the doctrine of Possible Experience, although Prof. Royce believes his position to be quite foreign, even hostile, to that. One divergence is, that where another thinker might speak of a hope, as we have done above, Prof. Royce would substitute a reductio ad absurdum of the contrary opinion — a diminution of man's natural sublime attitude to a sorry "A is A." Fortunately the logic of those arguments is never impeccable, so that the hopes retain their matter and are not reduced to mere formulae.
106. Two other views are examined. One is that of cognitive Dualism, which Professor Royce calls by the objectionable name Realism (as if the Dualists alone admitted outward realities). The other is that of Mysticism, which is less an opinion than an attitude of mind, of which Professor Royce gives an exceedingly penetrating analysis. There is a long and technical supplementary essay on the One, the Many, and the Infinite, which is very important.
107. The dress of the book is as charming as that of one so sure of being long and often perused ought to be.
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108. Does the reader dabble in metaphysics? If he does, we make no sort of doubt that his opinions on such matters are nearer correct than those of any other human being; for we have talked with a hundred metaphysicians without ever yet meeting one who was not vastly superior to all the rest. So, a fortiori, the same superiority must be enjoyed by the gracious reader. But present company excepted, we do not know that there lives a second metaphysician as strong as Prof. Royce. It need scarcely be said that no other theoretical science is at all comparable with philosophy in respect to the deep and large reading that its study absolutely makes exigent, lacking which the most splendid natural powers will leave their possessor a mere child in this science. For it is humanly impossible to know whither a given proposition in philosophy will inevitably lead without tracing out its historic development. Nor for this purpose will mere information suffice. It is requisite to enter into the range of ideas and spirit of each doctrine and thoroughly to assimilate it. In other sciences, only the true theories require close attention; but in philosophy the false ones are even more important, since it is precisely the thin and light soil of one-sided and extreme opinions that is easiest turned over to bring up the absurdities that lurk beneath the surface of their assumptions. Perhaps the greatest difficulty of the study arises from the circumstance that in youth one lacks the patience to sit down and soak one's mind in views from which one entirely dissents; so that by the time the preparation for original work is accomplished, the élan and agility of intellect that are nowhere more needed have been lost in the wear of advancing age. Now Royce has not only read all the great systems but he shows a truly admirable power of throwing himself into the mind of each philosopher and of appreciating with the greatest nicety just how each thinker has thought. The present volume contains a striking illustration of this in an exposition of the central position of Brahminic mysticism. It is a revelation almost too complete for the author's purpose, in that it comes perilously near to persuading the reader that that which the mystic affirms is undeniably true, and may almost indispose him to listen to its refutation.
109. The scientific world has now expended more than two centuries of concerted endeavor in the attempt to explain the phenomena of nature by means of the attractions and repulsions of discrete particles, and it is beginning to look strongly as if that hypothesis were insufficient. Some of the best authorities, for instance, now profess to demonstrate that phenomena as relatively simple as those of the elasticity of solid bodies cannot be so explained. Accordingly, new hypotheses infinitely more difficult to deal with are getting proposed, such as that the universe is filled with a homogeneous fluid whose vortices constitute ordinary matter. It would be a pity, would it not, to turn the speculative energy of the world into such a channel only to find, at the expiration of two centuries, or more likely five, that it had a foolish hypothesis from which little or nothing ought ever to have been expected. If we only had at our command at this moment a really scientific logic and metaphysics, which might serve as guides in the choice of a hypothesis, such a doctrine might at this time be of the utmost service to science. But unfortunately the profounder sects of philosophy have sprung out of theology. Their adherents are tainted with the vicious intellectual diathesis of the seminaries. No class of persons above day-laborers has less comprehension of what science really is. As for mathematics, which ought to be the log-line and binnacle of the metaphysician, they are afraid to touch it, or when they do so venture, only make themselves ridiculous. This is particularly unfortunate because the main Hegelian idea is virtually an attempt to introduce the conception of continuity into philosophical doctrine, a conception which the mathematicians, on their side, have been engaged, since the birth of the differential calculus, in endeavoring to render distinct, hitherto without complete success; so that could a concerted assault be made upon it from opposite sides, it might be greatly to the advantage of both assailants. Now Prof. Royce is doing good service toward bringing this about, since, while he enjoys the esteem and sympathy of the theological metaphysicians, he is thoroughly alive to the ideas of science, and is thoroughly versed in all the more philosophical part of modern mathematical speculation. A "Supplementary Essay," appended to these lectures shows this very clearly. Meantime, in respect to that subtlety which seizes with accuracy upon the precise essence of a philosophical problem and disembarrasses it from all irrelevant considerations, which is the prime quality of a metaphysical mind, it may well be doubted whether any of the great figures of the history of philosophy have exhibited greater power than our American Plato.
110. It is now time to indicate what we venture to conceive to be Prof. Royce's greatest fault as a philosophical thinker. Metaphysicians have always taken mathematics as their exemplar in reasoning, without remarking the essential difference between that science and their own. Mathematical reasoning has for its object to ascertain what would be true in a hypothetical world which the mathematician has created for himself, — not altogether arbitrarily, it is true, but nevertheless, so that it can contain no element which he has not himself deliberately introduced into it. (Ed.) Cf. 3.363 and elsewhere in [CP] III. †3 All that his sort of reasoning, therefore, has to do is to develop a preconceived idea; and it never reaches any conclusion at all as to what is or is not true of the world of existences. The metaphysician, on the other hand, is engaged in the investigation of matters of fact, and the only way to matters of fact is the way of experience. The only essential difference between metaphysics and meteorology, linguistics, or chemistry, is that it does not avail itself of microscopes, telescopes, voyages, or other means of acquiring recondite experiences, but contents itself with ascertaining all that can be ascertained from such experience as every man undergoes every day and hour of his life. (Ed.) Cf. 6.2. †4 All other differences between philosophy and the special sciences are mere consequences of this one. It follows, that deductive, or mathematical, reasoning, although in metaphysics it may oftener "take the stage" than in the drama of special research, yet after all, has precisely the same rôle to enact, and nothing more. All genuine advance must come from real observation and inductive reasoning. Yet Dr. Royce cannot free himself from the Hegelian notion that the one satisfactory method in philosophy is to examine an opinion and to detect in it some hidden denial of itself, — which is nothing but the reductio ad absurdum. Strange that that method of reasoning to which mathematicians are often forced to resort, but which they always dislike because it does not exhibit the rationale of the proposition it proves, should by philosophers be made the standard of excellence. Such refutations in metaphysics are most frequently downright fallacies due to the loose habits of thinking prevalent in the theological seminaries. When their plight is not quite as bad as that, the very fact that the contradiction has to be sought in some obscure corner of the opinion refuted, shows that this opinion only needs to be modified in an inessential detail in order to escape the refutation. In the rare instances in which such refutations are really decisive, what happens is, that the refuter, without himself remarking it, slips into his reasoning some experiential fact. If, before publishing his proof, he were to search out that fact and bring it forward explicitly, he would not only make his reasoning more truly logical, though no longer purely deductive, but he would also render it infinitely more persuasive. For very seldom is anybody really convinced by the Socratic style of dialectic. Rather point out to a man a new fact, or one that he had overlooked; and then he himself, seeing it to be pertinent, will straightway begin to revise his opinion. The volume before us contains a remarkable illustration of this penchant of Prof. Royce in a proposed refutation of the opinion that, not merely is the element of existence a brute and non-intellectual element, but further that there exist things and facts about them which are as they are irrespective of any reason or idea. That this opinion can very readily be disposed of nobody knows better than Dr. Royce. But he is not satisfied with any mode of disproving it other than a reductio ad absurdum; and in order to effect the refutation in that way, he forces upon the notion of independence (or being irrespective of reason) elements that nobody who holds the opinion to be disproved will, for a moment, admit that it involves. With that hint, we refer the reader to Lecture III in the book itself.
111. The main purpose of this volume is to show the inadequacy of the doctrine that whatever we know is either a direct experience or a possibility of experience, — a doctrine that Berkeley, more than any other person, introduced into philosophy and upon which Kant built his system of critic, — and further to propose in place of this doctrine a substitute [which], while Dr. Royce would certainly not claim it to be altogether novel, is undoubtedly a distinct improvement upon previous conceptions. Everybody who has reflected deeply upon the Berkeleyan principle must have seen that it leaves something to be desired. It will aid the reader to understand precisely what Dr. Royce's work is designed to effect, and how far it does actually effect it, if we state that doctrine of Possible Experience in one of its more modern forms.
112. Remembering, then, that philosophy is a science based upon everyday experience, we must not fall into the absurdity of setting down as a datum and starting-point of philosophy any abstract and simple idea, as Hegel did when he began his logic with pure Being; but we must set out from ideas familiar and complex, as Hegel began his greater masterpiece by considering a man sitting under a tree in a garden in the afternoon. We must not begin by talking of pure ideas, — vagabond thoughts that tramp the public roads without any human habitation, — but must begin with men and their conversation. We are familiar with the phenomenon of a man's expressing an opinion, sometimes decidedly, often otherwise. Perhaps it will be a mere suggestion, a mere question. Any such suggestion that may be expressed and understood relates to some common experience of the interlocutors, or, if there is a misunderstanding, they may think they refer to some common experience when, in fact, they refer to quite different experiences. A man reasoning with himself is liable to just such a misunderstanding. About this common experience the speaker has something to suggest which is supposed to be new to his auditor. Now this suggestion will be found inductively, by the examination of instances, to consist invariably in this, that if the auditor or any other man will act in a certain way, more or less vaguely described, he will find that common experience to connect itself with a new experience after a fashion analogous to other connections of experiences, which have made this mode of connection familiar to both parties. For example, if example be needed, suppose a man to go out of his house at night and see the light of a distant fire in the sky. He meets a neighbor and remarks, "There is a fire." (Ed.) This expression is indexical; cf. 2.305ff. †5 If he had only said "a fire exists," he would have conveyed next to no meaning at all. Not quite no meaning, since the remark would even so refer to that universe that is familiarly known to both men. But in saying "There is a fire," he refers to the common experience of that very place and time, and virtually says that if the second person will raise his eyes and look about him, he will find the common experience of that place and time to connect itself with the experience of a light as of a fire, the mode of connection being the familiar one that the speaker indicated. Let us take another example. Let the second man, having seen the fire, ask "Would you say, now, that that fire was about three miles away?" This virtually suggests that if the first man or any other man will fill his purse, and take ship, and go to Westminster, and break into the houses of parliament, and bring away the standard yard, and lay it down repeatedly on the ground from where the two stand to where the fire is, and utter the cardinal numbers in their order as the successive layings down proceed, or if he will perform any other experiment virtually amounting to that, then the last number uttered might be 5280, and if it should prove to be a number near to that, he might not be surprised. Extensive experience leads us to expect that if an experiment virtually amounting to that were tried a hundred times, different numbers would be obtained which would cluster about one of them, and that among a million trials the clustering would be still more marked, according to a law well-known to mathematicians. It is possible, no doubt, that if our experience were still more extensive, we should find that if the experiment were tried, say, more than a billion times, then a new phenomenon would emerge and the oftener it was tried the less marked might grow the clustering. Our hope, however, in endeavoring to make a measurement extremely precise, is that there is a certain value toward which the resultant of all the experiments would approximate more and more, without limitation. Having that hope, the Berkeleyan theory is, that whenever we endeavor to state the distance, all that we aim at is to state as nearly as possible what that ultimate result of experience would be. We do not aim at anything quite beyond experience, but only at the limiting result toward which all experience will approximate, — or, at any rate, would approximate, were the inquiry to be prosecuted without cessation. And the theory is that so it is with all attempts at knowing anything more than what we immediately experience. This might be called the doctrine of the Non-relativity of Knowledge, since it eliminates any non-notional correlate of knowledge.
113. Prof. Royce seems to think that this doctrine is unsatisfactory because it talks about what would be, (Ed.) Cf. 1.420, 2.661-668, 4.580, 5.453, 5.467, 5.528, 6.327. †6 although the event may never come to pass. It may be he is right in this criticism; yet to our apprehension this "would be" is readily resolved into a hope for will be. For what we mean by saying that any event, B, would happen under conditions, A, that are never fulfilled, is that the ultimate opinion which will, as we hope, actually be attained concerning any given question (though not in any finite time concerning all questions), will accept certain general laws from which a formal logical consequence will be that conditions, A, in any other world in which they may be fulfilled will, those laws still obtaining, involve the happening of the event, B. In short, we have only to conceive that the ultimate opinion about those general laws is attained before the attainment of the ultimate opinion that the condition, A, is never anywhere fulfilled. Let us not, then, too hastily accede to that criticism. On the other hand, it would be difficult to resist the criticism that the theory is unsatisfactory because it talks too exclusively of what will be. It is obvious that this will be is the very heart of the theory. The familiar notion of the flow of time is one of the most important data of metaphysical experience. In the special sciences facts are set over against theories, because it is the business of those sciences to connect the special phenomena which they discover with the general experience they derive from other sources. But philosophy embraces all experience. Its direct data are the familiar phenomena found everywhere which, from the point of view of psychology are quasi-theories, that is, are supposed to be worked up by the mind from simple elements that are not at all familiar to us, or even for the most part observable by themselves. It is of no consequence to the metaphysician whether psychology may teach that our sensations actually have a flow in time or whether we are only conscious in a series of detached instants, like the separate pictures of a zoëtrope. Whether Prof. Royce be right or wrong in asserting that we have an immediate consciousness of a finite span of time is equally unimportant. (Ed.) This question is further discussed in the following section. †7 The only important thing here is our metaphysical phenomenon, or familiar notion, that the past is a matter for knowledge but not for endeavor, that the future is an object that we may hope to influence, but which cannot affect us except through our anticipations, and that the present is a moment immeasurably small through which, as their limit, past and future can alone act upon one another. Whether this be an illusion or not, it is the phenomenon of which the metaphysician has to give an account. Now the Berkeleyan idea, when we come to reflect upon it, amounts to this, that past experience is in some sense, my ego, that future experience is my sole non-ego, continually being assimilated by the ego through the present, and that that in this future non-ego which is destined at last to remain unrevoked in the ego is the only exemplar to which we desire that our ideas should conform.
114. Prof. Royce admits, as we think justly, that this doctrine of Possible Experience is true as far as it goes. But still he holds it to be unsatisfactory; and so it is, inasmuch as it regards time as a mere order of succession and fails to do justice to the continuity of the flow, which makes of all time an individual object. That time is not a mere order of succession among a multitude of instants is shown by the following considerations. Any multitude of instants, however great, will find room for their succession in any lapse of time; so that if time were the mere order among a multitude of instants, that multitude would have to be a maximum than which no multitude could be greater. But it can be proved that there is no such maximum multitude. Consequently, there is more in time than any or all multitudes. (Ed.) Cf. 4.639. †8 Time is such, says Kant, that every part of it has similar parts, — a proposition very different from merely saying that time is infinitely divisible, though Kant himself did not perceive the distinction. This continuity, or similarity of parts in respect to having parts, necessarily makes time an individual whole (though precisely how we lack space to explain); and thus it is that we shall never have a satisfactory account of what we virtually aim at in seeking to know, until we recognize the individual character of the object of search.
115. This individual character is what Prof. Royce desires to bring out by his new definition of the object. But we must say that his attempt at defining an individual is surprisingly feeble; nor is this the only fault of this kind the book contains. But the truth is that the intellectual life of Harvard has, ever since Dr. Walker's death, been languishing more and more for want of a good sharp logician. To one who visits it once in every four or five years this is more noticeable than to a man living there. †9 He reaches this aspect of the matter through the conception of Purpose. Every idea he says has its purpose, which he calls its "internal meaning." We wish that in place of the vague word "idea," he had substituted judgment or virtual judgment; for since he is considering cognition in its truth or falsity, and only judgments have truth or falsity, he would thus have made himself more explicit and clear. Reality belongs primarily to facts, and attaches to things only as elements of facts. A judgment asserts that certain consequences would result from more or less vaguely indicated lines of action, which would be so many experiments. Now by the internal meaning or purpose of an idea Prof. Royce, if we rightly gather his intention, understands all the experiments which would verify it. We can hardly believe that he is so entirely won over to the extreme pragmatism of his colleague, James, as to hold that Doing is the ultimate purpose of life. Nor is this necessary; for the purpose of an experiment is to learn, and the performance of it is only a means to that end. This internal meaning calls, then, for more and more definiteness without cessation; and the limit toward which it thus tends but never fully attains is the knowledge of an individual, in short, of God. All this part of the discussion is susceptible of much improvement, which will come when the idea of continuity has been more fully analyzed. But, as it stands, it is a very notable contribution to the prima philosophia; and we need not say that in the book itself the thought shines out far more brightly and vivifyingly than it can shine through the cranny of our poor notice of it.
116. One word about the appearance of the book. The press-work is not quite uniform. Some pages are splendid. Others have greyish areas. The shape of the page is singularly pleasing, and we have been led to compare it with other serious octavos, in search of some reason for the sense of pleasure it imparts. We find that in English octavos, not mathematical, the diagonal of the rectangle of solid text divides the right angle between the vertical and horizontal edges into 1/3 and 2/3, or 30° and 60°. In American octavos, which are perhaps a little handsomer in shape, the same slope drawn from a bottom corner will intersect the opposite vertical edge half way between the text and the running title. Mathematical octavos are made broader, in order to accommodate long formulae; and they are far more pleasing in appearance. Now it is well-known that owing to the lesser strength of the muscles that cause the vertical motions of the eyeball, a rectangle that looks square really has a height less than its breadth by about one tenth part. In order, therefore, to find the ratio of height to breadth in a rectangle whose diagonal shall seem to the eye to divide the right angle into a third and a two-thirds, we must take 9/10 of the tangent of 60°, which gives 1.559. In this pleasing page of Royce's volume, we find the height of the solid text is 1.556 times the breadth, which agrees as closely as the measurement can be made. Two diagonals drawn across the page in pencil will seem to make two equilateral triangles.
§2. Second Series: Nature, Man, and the Moral Order (Ed.) Paragraphs 117 (in part), 120 (in part), and 126-130 are from the review of Josiah Royce's The World and the Individual: Gifford Lectures [on Natural Religion] delivered before the University of Aberdeen, Second Series: Nature, Man, and the Moral Order (Macmillan, 1901, 480 pp.), The Nation 75 (31 July 1902)94-96, with added quotations in the present footnote. Paragraphs 117 (in part), 118-119, 120 (in part), 121-125, and 131 are from various partial drafts of this review, Widener IV, dated c.1902 on the basis of the dates of the book and of the published review, with added quotations in 117n12 and 122n19. In a letter to James dated 25 November 1902 (James Collection, Houghton Library) Peirce remarks: "As for the Nation, I get $250 a year from it on which we live; and therefore I cannot speak above a whisper about it. But the way my bits (bad enough, at best) are cut is awful. I was really wounded at the way all the praise was cut out of my notice of Royce." In a letter to "My dear Prof. Royce," dated 27 May 1902, Widener VB2a, Peirce says: "I am going to try to say what should be said of your second Volume in the Nation. I shall send Garrison something which is too long for anybody to read and too short to express what I try to cram into it; and Garrison will cut it down so as to leave what will strike the afternoon businessman on his way uptown hanging on to a strap, as smartly said, and whether or not it will mean anything to you I can't say. So in case it shouldn't get said there, as I hope it will, I will say hic et nunc that the volume has cut off a big piece of the road that it remains for Philosophy to travel before she will join company with the rest of the peaceable sciences. That junction must be made or Philosophy is a humbug. Your best years of philosophic reflection are still before you. The time is ripe and you are the very man to accomplish the great achievement of covering that distance. Yet you could not do it with your present views of logic, antagonistic to all that is possible for progressive science. My entreaty is that you will study logic." †10
117. Professor Royce's second and concluding volume discusses questions of intimate interest to everybody. It is more persuasive than the first, of which it enhances the significance. The design of the whole now comes out — to introduce into the Hegelian philosophy of religion such rectifications as must result from recognition of scientific conceptions worked out during the century now completing itself since that philosophy first appeared. Of these new conceptions, some are psychological, some logical; but the chief of them are the new mathematical ideas which cluster about that of an infinite multitude. Mathematicians, perhaps, still linger on the stage, who, in their best days, used to be quite positive that one cannot reason mathematically about infinity, and used to feel, like the old lady about her total depravity, that, this cherished inability being taken away, the bottom would fall out of the calculus. Such notions are obsolete. Various degrees of infinity are to-day conceived with perfect definiteness; and the utter misapprehension of the metaphysicians about it, above all of Hegel, glares. As a first serious attempt to apply to philosophical subjects the exactitude of thought that reigns in the mathematical sciences, and this, not on the part of some obscure recluse whose results do not become known to the public, but on that of an eminent professor in a great university, to whom the world is disposed to listen with attention, Royce's "The World and the Individual" will stand a prominent milestone upon the highway of philosophy. (Ed.) The remainder of this paragraph and the following two paragraphs are from manuscript (see 117n10). †11 Agitating problems to which no man can be indifferent, offering us, at any rate, a sublime conception of the relation of man to God, a fit trellis for [a] vine of religion that might appease the longings of the heart in life and in the hour of death, it is a book about which little fuller information is proper here than concerning any ordinary essay in ontology. . . . (Ed.) The closing paragraph of the letter to Royce, 27 May 1902 (see 117n10), reads: "Underneath your logic which I cannot approve there is a nearly parallel stream of thought perfectly sound and in fact without doubt this was really what has kept you straight so that, — of course, I am saying what seems to me, — the affirmatory clauses of your conclusions are approximately right. Your statement of the relation of the individual to God is sublime and fit to satisfy the soul in life and in the hour of death. It must stand for age after age. My feeling is that the individual just fills his little place in the revelation of the universal and except for the sake of what fragment of universal meaning he bears is no account. Like the word 'to' which fills out 'Be or not be' and so helps the effect of the drama of Hamlet. If there is so much glee in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, what must be the deep ineffable felicity to Carnegie of picking up a newspaper in the elevated and so saving his copper. Individuals are cells." Cf. [Bibliography] M-16a, pp. 300-301. †12
118. Metaphysics is not yet a subject concerning which magisterial judgments can be wise; but surveying its present situation from the standpoint of a greater respect for physical science than for theology, and for the objective style of thought of the English with its faint traditional odor of scholasticism rather than for German subjectivity, the reviewer has been brought to believe that metaphysics has at length reached a point in its disorderly march at which it can now discern, through the haze upon the distant hill, the place at which it is destined to join company with the orderly army of science. Surely, that reunion must take place sometime. All human research must come to be conducted upon some unitary plan. The pendulum of dispute may swing long; but we must hope it will at last come to rest. To workers for that end this book is an encouraging signal. For only let exact diagrammatic conceptions, like those of mathematics, once take the place of the vague discourse that has prevailed in modern philosophy since it threw off those wholesome obligations of debate (which kept the scholastics to precise points and insured their precise arguments' meeting precise criticism), and what more will be needed to make metaphysics a science? One vital condition must be satisfied. The scientific man hangs upon the lips of nature, in order to learn wherein he is ignorant and mistaken: the whole character of the scientific procedure springs from that disposition. The metaphysician begins with a resolve to make out the truth of a foregone conclusion that he has really never doubted for an instant. Hegel was frank enough to avow that so it was in his case. His "voyage of discovery" was undertaken in order to recover the very fleece that it professed to bring home. The development of the metaphysician's thought is a continual breeding in and in; its destined outcome, sterility. The experiment was fairly tried with Hegelianism through an entire generation of Germans. The metaphysician is a worshipper of his own prepossessions. As Royce expresses it, he is intent upon developing his own purpose. The scientific man is eager to submit himself, his ideas, and his purpose, to the Great Power which, no doubt, penetrates his own being, but is yet all but wholly external to him and beyond anything that his poor present notion could ever, of itself, develope unfructified. The Absolute Knowledge of Hegel is nothing but G.W.F. Hegel's idea of himself; and it has not taught him the very first true lesson in philosophy, that "whoever shall choose to seek his own purpose and idea shall miss it, and whoever shall abandon his own purpose and idea to adopt the purpose and idea of the Author of nature shall accomplish that, and his own long-abandoned purpose and idea along with it." If the idealist school will add to their superior earnestness the diligence of the mathematician about details, one will be glad to hope that it may be they who shall make metaphysics one of the true sciences. Prof. Royce himself has yet his best years of philosophical reflexion before him. The time seems all but ripe for the achievement of this great benefit to mankind; and he beyond any other now living seems to be the man fit for the undertaking. But it cannot be brought to accomplishment until Hegel is aufgehoben, with his mere rotation on his axis. Inquiry must react against experience in order that the ship may be propelled through the ocean of thought . . . .
119. Prof. Royce's theory, roughly sketched, is this. "An Idea is any state of mind that has a conscious meaning." As for the 'meaning,' logicians have recognized since Abélard's day and earlier that there is one thing which any sign, external or internal, stands for, and another thing which it signifies; its denoted breadth, its "connoted" depth. They have further generally held, in regard to the most important signs, that the depth, or signification, is intrinsic, the breadth extrinsic. Prof. Royce applying this doctrine to Ideas, notices their Internal Meaning and their External Meaning. He conceives of the internal meaning in a peculiar way. Another writer, a quarter of a century ago, laid down this maxim: "Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of those effects is the whole of our conception of the object." (Ed.) 5.402; italics not in the text quoted. †13 In the same pragmatistic spirit, Prof. Royce holds that the Internal Meaning of an idea is a Purpose, obscurely recognized in consciousness, partially fulfilled in being recognized but mainly unfulfilled and ill-understood in itself. The external meaning lies in the fulfillment of the purpose. In the opinion [of] some students who have succeeded in rendering the doctrines of logic more precise than they used to be, it is better to divide the difficulty of defining the meaning of an "idea," by first analyzing the nature of a sign in general. For an "idea," as having a meaning, is of the nature of a sign. After the general nature of a sign is once mastered, the problem of determining in what the meaning of an idea consists will evidently be stripped of a portion of its difficulty, and, as it turns out, of the greater portion. But in analyzing the general nature of a sign, it will be needful, to distinguish radically different kinds of signs. A sign may serve as a sign simply because it happens to resemble its object. (Ed.) Peirce generally calls such signs "icons"; see [CP] II. †14 This resemblance will, then, constitute its internal meaning. But it cannot be said to have any external meaning, since it does not profess to represent anything; for if it did, that would be a manner of signifying its object, not consisting in merely resembling it. There are other signs which become such by virtue of being really connected with their objects. (Ed.) These are generally called "indices" by Peirce; see [CP] II. †15 Such is a symptom of disease, or the letters attached to parts of a diagram. The external meaning of such a sign is its most prominent feature. Its internal meaning may be vanishingly small, as in the case of the letters on the diagram, without ever utterly disappearing. There is, however, a third totally different order of signs, which become such, not by virtue of any character of their own as things, nor by virtue of any real connection with their objects, but simply by virtue of being represented to be signs. (Ed.) These are generally called "symbols" by Peirce; see [CP] II. †16 Thus, the word 'cuckoo' does present a resemblance to the bird; but its onomatopoeia is a mere accident of its origin. It is further most used when cuckoos, or some effects of cuckoos, are really present; but that slight real connection with the birds is insignificant. It is constituted a name for the genus of birds exclusively by the circumstance that an English-speaking hearer of the word will so understand it. Such signs may have little or much internal meaning and external meaning but they have a third kind of meaning which consists in the character of the interpretant signs which they determine. This is their principal meaning. What Prof. Royce calls an "idea" is a sign of this class. For when he defines an idea as a state of mind which consciously "means" something, the whole context shows, as he would admit, that it "means" something in the sense of intending or purposing something. Now a purposive state of mind is one that signifies something by virtue of intending to be interpreted in a deed. Therefore, although an idea certainly has its internal and its external meaning, yet its principal meaning is of a different kind from either of those.
120. That the object of an idea, then, its external meaning, is of the nature of a sign could hardly be gainsaid. But Professor Royce finds it not only a sign but an idea; not only one idea but a "concrete" idea in the Hegelian sense, and that, not relatively, but perfectly, and so of the nature of life; and not only life, but an entire life. "The Being of the real object of which you now think, means a life that expresses the fulfilment of just your present plan." (Ed.) The preceding part of this paragraph is from The Nation; the following part and subsequent paragraphs are from the manuscripts (see 117n10). †17 We omit an inadmissible qualification (Ed.) The World and the Individual, First Series, p. 359. The full statement reads: "And the Being of the real object of which you now think means a life that expresses the fulfilment of just your present plan, in the greatest measure in which your plan itself is logically capable of fulfilment." †18 and remark that Prof. Royce's theory even if it were proved would not afford the slightest rational assurance that there is any such thing as a reality. In that respect it is, however, no worse than other theories, except in professing to be better.
121. An arbitrary feature of the theory, and a most regrettable blemish, where the author, too, parts company with Hegel, is that he insists that the object of an idea must be something other, — or as he writes it, Other, — than the idea itself. Not having space to criticize this, we shall simply ignore it in the further account . . . .
122. But how, it will be asked, can the meaning of a single idea be an entire life? An idea being a state of mind involving a purpose not fully realized, its internal meaning being that purpose so far as it is defined, we can understand that that purpose becomes more and more definite, until, being a sincere purpose, free from arrière-pensée, at the moment when it becomes in all respects determinate, it is transformed into an act . . . . But how can it become a complete life? The answer to this is very simple. Royce evidently thinks that a purpose cannot be fully definite, until all the circumstances of the entire life are taken into account; so that, however meagre the internal meaning of an idea may be, as long as it remains general and "abstract," yet when that internal meaning is fully accomplished by its becoming in every respect determined, the external meaning will cover the whole life of the individual. Certainly, it is conceivable that such might be the result; but to prove that such would be the result, a far more exact examination of the question would be requisite than the author attempts. There is another difficulty which he removes very happily. How, he supposes his reader to ask, can an idea, which is so microscopic a part of a life, contain within its implication a distinct feature corresponding to every feature of the entire life of which it is only a part? Here, he resorts to Gauss's conception of an Abbild, which has played so important a part in mathematics. That is to say, he likens the idea representing the entire life to a map of a country lying upon the ground in that country. Imagine that upon the soil of England, there lies somewhere a perfect map of England, showing every detail, however small. Upon this map, then, will be shown that very ground where the map lies, with the map itself in all its minutest details. There will be a part fully representing its whole, just as the idea is supposed to represent the entire life. On that map will be shown the map itself, and the map of the map will again show a map of itself, and so on endlessly. But each of these successive maps lies well inside the one which it immediately represents. Unless, therefore, there is a hole in the map within which no point represents a point otherwise unrepresented, this series of maps must all converge to a single point which represents itself throughout all the maps of the series. In the case of the idea, that point would be the self-consciousness of the idea. Since an idea is a state of mind with a conscious purpose, it obviously must be self-conscious. (Ed.) The first paragraph of the letter to Royce, 27 May 1902 (see 117n10 and 117n12), contains the following statement: "Perhaps the most suggestive phrase in your book is your 'dynamo of ideas.' Imagine each ether to be composed of atoms which are vortices in another ether of similar constitution and if the velocity of transmission increases as from sound to light, the whole endless series might be traversed in a fraction of a second, with purely dynamical causation, passing then into an endless series of soul-ethers under causation purely final or formal. No matter how improbable such [a] hypothesis, its mere possibility refutes the principal argument for 'Parallelism.' That is, it shows that though matter cannot act immediately upon mind or t'other way it may act all the same upon it. That self-control, self consciousness, involve endless series is clear. There are other modes of application, not merely other applications." Cf. 7.370. The following is the closing paragraph of a letter to "My dear Professor Royce," dated 28 May 1902, Widener VB2a: "I wish you would tell me precisely why it is that you object to making anything its own purpose, or the sign of itself. It seems to me clear that that is just what consciousness is; and if that were admitted, the obstacle to the introduction of higher ideas, which we have but of which you admit no realization in God, would be removed." †19 Here, therefore, is a beautiful and needed, though not complete, confirmation of the idea's really being so related to the entire life. Singularly enough, however, for some reason, Prof. Royce here draws back and supposes the analogy with the map to break down in this respect . . . .
123. It will be perceived that, according to Prof. Royce's theory, if an idea fails of being a Self, it is only because it is general and not fully determined. Its implicit or germinal inward meaning is a little Self representing the entire man as its external meaning. In a similar way, the Self of the man is perhaps included within a larger Self of the community. On the other hand, the man's Self embraces intermediate selves, the domestic Self, the Self of business, the better Self, the evil spirit that sometimes possesses him. Here the author draws support from the psychological doctrine of what he calls the "time-span," a doctrine which, so far as it has really been placed beyond doubt, amounts to little more than that our image of the events of the few seconds last past is, or is very like, a direct perception, while our representation of what happened a minute ago partakes far less of the perceptive character. (Ed.) In one of the partial drafts (see 117n10), Peirce says in this connection: "Abridge our theory as we may and must, there is one detail which it will not do to omit. That is the use which is made of the psychological doctrine of the 'time span.' That singularly accurate observer, Thomas Reid, whose lessons have not yet been thoroughly learned by psychologists, seems to have been the first distinctly to recognize that we have something very like a direct perception of duration or, at least, of motion; and he drew the needful distinction between the lapse of time during the act of perception and the lapse of time represented in the percept. There are sundry unsettled questions, such as whether there is any consciousness in an instant of time and whether the time that is directly perceived seems to be present or not, but the best modern psychologists even from their precursor, Herbart, and more and more yearly since James's great work, recognize that our image of the last six to twelve seconds past is almost or quite of the nature of a percept, while the remoter past and the future are represented in a more mediated way. One opinion which has been put forward and which seems, at any rate, to be tenable and to harmonize with the modern logico-mathematical conceptions, is that our image of the flow of events receives, in a strictly continuous time, strictly continual accessions on the side of the future, while fading in a gradual manner on the side of the past, and that thus the absolutely immediate present is gradually transformed by an immediately given change into a continuum of the reality of which we are thus assured. The argument is that in this way, and apparently in this way only, our having the idea of a true continuum can be accounted for." †20 The phenomenon had already been seized upon by several idealistic writers as affording a refutation of dualism; but the large calibre of Royce's thought cannot be better appreciated than by comparing their style of putting the phenomenon to the service of metaphysics with his.
124. He imagines that greater selves will naturally have vastly longer time-spans than lesser selves. Now a consciousness whose time-span was a thousandth of a second or a thousand years would not ordinarily be recognized by us, as observers of its external manifestations, as being a consciousness, at all. The time-span of the All-seeing must cover all time; and thus foreknowledge and freewill become more clearly reconcilable after the fashion of Boethius, St. Augustine, and others.
125. Every reality, then, is a Self; and the Selves are intimately connected, as if they formed a continuum. Each one is, so to say, a delineation, — with mathematical truth, incongruous as the metaphor is, we may say that each is a quasimap of the organic aggregate of all the Selves, which is itself a Self, the Absolute Idea of Hegel, or God. It is a flagrant offence to use this name in philosophy. It is like inviting a man to see the body of his wife dissected. There is also a pretension in it that the philosophy of religion can be religion. But things shocking to right feeling are sometimes necessary in philosophy, as they are in science. It will be observed that if the Selves did form a continuum, each would be distinguished by its own point of Self-consciousness. This would not generally be the same as the point of self-consciousness of an idea within self, since each idea is distinguished by its own exclusive self-consciousness. The systems of delineation must be different. Here we see an inadequacy in the metaphor of the map; for what, more than anything else, makes my ideas mine is that they appeal to me, and are, or tend to become, represented in my general consciousness as representations. But, of course, the map-metaphor must be inadequate, since a map wants several of the essential characters of the class of signs to which ideas belong. Again, in the map the boundaries of the selves are somewhat indeterminate; each must embrace no more nor less than a complete map of the whole surface; but the boundary of any one can be considered to be drawn in any way which fulfills this condition, the boundaries of the others being drawn accordingly, just as on the Mercator's chart, which gives an endless series of representations of the whole globe, any one line from pole to pole may be taken as the boundary of the globe as represented in each chart. But the boundaries between Selves are not so indeterminate, because all that is in one Self appeals by a continuum of representations to that Self's self-consciousness. It will be necessary, therefore, to replace the idea of a map by that of a continuum of maps overlying one another. A map is a section of a projection of which the surface mapped is another section. The projection itself is a sheaf of lines which diverge from one point. Instead of saying that a Self is a map, a more adequate metaphor would call it a projection of the reality, of which projection any one idea of the Self is a section. At any rate, it is plain that the map-metaphor requires deep emendation in order to answer the purposes of philosophy. At the same time, it is a considerable aid even as it is; and the initiating of the introduction of such exact ideas into philosophy is one of the momentous events in its history. (Ed.) The following paragraphs are from The Nation (see 117n10). †21
126. All reasoning goes upon the assumption that there is a true answer to whatever question may be under discussion, which answer cannot be rendered false by anything that the disputants may say or think about it; and further, that the denial of that true answer is false. (Ed.) Cf. 5.384 and Chapter 2 on The Works of George Berkeley in the present book. †22 This makes an apparent difficulty for idealism. For if all reality is of the nature of an actual idea, there seems to be no room for possibility or any lower mode than actuality, among the categories of being. (Hegel includes modality only in his Subjective Logic.) But what, then, can be the mode of being of a representation or meaning unequivocally false? For Hegel, the false is the bad, that which is out of harmony with its own essence; and since, in his view, contradiction is the great form of activity of the world, he has no difficulty in admitting that an idea may be out of harmony with itself. Prof. Royce, however, seems almost to resent the idea that anybody could suppose that he denied the validity of the distinction of truth and falsehood. He is fairly outspoken in pronouncing sundry doctrines false (a word Hegel hardly uses), even if we do not quite hear his foot come down; and nothing does he hold more false than the usual form of stating the distinction now in question, namely, that a true proposition corresponds to a real matter of fact, by which is meant a state of things, definite and individual, which does not consist merely in being represented (in any particular representation) to be as it is. For example, if I dream that I find I can float in the air, this matter of dream is not matter of fact, for the reason that the only sense in which I can float in the air is that so my dream represented the matter. Now Prof. Royce offers to demonstrate by necessary reasoning that the statement — or, as he expresses it, that "to be real means to be independent of ideas which relate to that being" (Ed.) ". . . to be real means to be independent of ideas which, while other than a given real being, still relate to that being." The World and the Individual, First Series, pp. 92-93. †23 — is false. His argument to this effect will serve as a sufficiently characteristic, but rather favorable sample of his general style of argumentation.
127. Having given us to understand that he is going to disprove the proposition, he opens his argumentation by declaring that he does not know what the proposition means. Thereupon, he proceeds to propound a general maxim of procedure for all cases in which one has to refute a proposition without knowing what it means. It is to begin by assigning to it its "most extreme form." This certainly does not signify the most extremely defensible meaning, but rather the most extremely indefensible meaning that the language will bear. The proposition having been refuted in this extreme sense, it will only be necessary afterwards to argue that other interpretations make no essential difference. This maxim, one would suppose, would prove very serviceable to anybody who should have any large amount of that sort of refutation to perform. In accordance with this maxim, Prof. Royce begins by assuming that realists hold that no idea in the slightest degree determines the real object of it, whether causally or in any other manner. Whether this does not overstep the limits of admissible interpretation, seeing that a realist who meant this would deny that any promise can really be kept, or that any purpose can influence the real result, the reader must say. At any rate, it would not seem to be a difficult position to refute.
128. Now in order that he may get the realist where he wants him, there are two acknowledgments which Professor Royce endeavors to extort from him. To bring him to the first, the author assumes the principle that all causal action is reciprocal, or of the nature of reaction. This is evidently contrary to popular opinion, which holds that while the past has exerted some efficient causality upon the future, the future cannot have any effect, in the strict sense of that word, upon the past; and that while the future may have influenced the past by final, or ideal, causation, the past cannot possibly influence the future as the aim of the future. The reader may judge whether a realist of so extreme a type as that which Professor Royce has set up would or would not admit that the real object of an idea cannot have influenced the idea, in the absence of any attempt on the part of Professor Royce to prove his general principle of reciprocity. If he would not, old-fashioned logic (which Hegelians, it is true, hold in high contempt) would pronounce the attempted demonstration to be a bald petitio principii.
129. In order to extract the second acknowledgment from the realist, Professor Royce produces an argument which would seem to have as much force for one kind of realist as for another. He supposes two objects, B and R, to be related to one another as the realist supposes the Being, or the real object of an idea, and the Representation, in the form of an idea of that object, to be related; and he undertakes to define the relation between them. "The definition in question," he says, "is, as a mere abstract statement, easy." (Ed.) The World and the Individual, First Series, p. 118. †24 One would think so. The realist simply says that B is not constituted by its being represented in R; that is, he says that the fact that B is as it is, would be logically consistent with R's representing it to be otherwise. But in place of this easily comprehensible relation, what fantastic attempt do we find at the definition that was pronounced to be so easy! Professor Royce will have it that the realist holds that the relation is such that no matter how R may be metamorphosed, it is logically possible for B to remain unchanged. In such a sense, what two things in the world are independent? Change the problematic madness of Hamlet into the pacification of the Philippines, and it will become logically inconsistent with the continuance of great disturbances there. But change the doubtful representation by Shakspere that the fictitious Hamlet was unhinged into the representation that the Philippines were pacificated in 1901, and it will not have the slightest logical consequence for the real state of things. The truth is, that Professor Royce is blind to a fact which all ordinary people will see plainly enough; that the essence of the realist's opinion is that it is one thing to be and another thing to be represented; and the cause of this cecity is that the Professor is completely immersed in his absolute idealism, which precisely consists in denying that distinction. It is his element, and there is total reflection at its surface. That, however, is what Professor Royce asks the realist to admit as a premise. The conclusion which he deduces from it is that if B is linked as cause to any determination of R, there must be a tertium quid by the mediation of which the causation takes place. Now the premise is absurd; and the formal rule is that from an absurd premise every conclusion must be allowed to be logical; that is to say, it is needless to dispute its logicality, the premise being false. The argument, therefore, cannot be called formally bad; nor can we object that a few lines below, in a restatement of the conclusion, B's being linked as cause gets changed into B's having any causal or other linkage.
130. Professor Royce, armed with his wrong definition of realism, goes on to a dilemma to show that, whether the realist says that real things are one or are many, he equally involves himself in contradiction. But, although the characteristics of his style of argumentation become even more prominent in that dilemma, the exigencies of space forbid our following him further. But we should like to say one word to this powerful and accurate thinker who has been so completely led astray in his argumentation by his Hegelian logic: Absolute idealism depends, as Hegel saw that it did, upon assuming that position at the outset. If your refutation of realism is addressed to students who are already absolute idealists at heart, we will not undertake to say whether it will be serviceable for the development of that doctrine, or not. But if it is addressed to realists themselves, it must conform to the logical principles recognized by realists, or be nugatory. Now you know very well that realists do not admit that matter of fact can be apodeictically demonstrated. You ought to know, and surely you do know, that if you drive them into a corner, they will simply modify their admissions so far as may be necessary to avoid self-contradiction, and that from the very nature of apodeictic proof it is absolutely impossible to close off such escape in arguing about matter of fact. The history of the doctrine of parallels illustrates what logic shows to be necessarily the state of the case. (Ed.) Cf. Chapter 5, "On Non-Euclidean Geometry," in the present book. †25 But the question of realism is a question of hard fact, if ever there was a hard fact; and therefore your method must be revolutionized if you are ever to convince any master of logic. (Ed.) The following paragraph is from manuscript (see 117n10). †26
131. Now let us address a few words to the author. A healthy religious spirit will not allow its religion to be disturbed by all the philosophy in the world. Nevertheless, a philosophy of religion deeply concerns us all. It is not a religious, but an intellectual need to bring our ideas into some harmony. Prof. Royce has inaugurated a vast reform, affecting not only the philosophy of religion but every department of metaphysics, and consisting in sweeping away all the vaguenesses and vagaries that now prevail in that science and replacing them by such exact ideas as Weierstrass and Cantor have begun to introduce into mathematics. No other man in the world, prominently before the public, is half so capable of working this matter out as he. What he has done is merely a preliminary essay. It is a pity that it fills a thousand pages. We want another book of about the same size; only instead of being written in the loose form of lectures, we want it to be a condensed and severe treatise, in which the innumerable vague and unsatisfactory points of the present exposition shall be minutely examined, in which all the new conceptions of multitude and continuity, and not merely that of the endless series, shall be applied not merely in the single narrow way in which that one is here applied, but in every way, not merely to the one matter to which it is here applied but to every subject of metaphysics from top to bottom, together with whatsoever other exact diagrammatic conceptions can be produced, and the whole reasoning, so far as it is demonstrative, be rendered diagrammatic, (Ed.) Cf. [CP] IV, Book II, "Existential Graphs." †27 and so far as it relates to questions of fact be made scientific. To illustrate what various applications may be made of the idea of the endless series, it may be noted that admitting the actuality of this, it does not follow that because A (or mind) cannot act directly upon B (or matter), . . . A cannot act upon B without the intervention of a tertium quid. (Ed.) Cf. 8.168. †28 The bearing of this simple remark upon the theory of Parallelism and upon the philosophy of conduct is dynamitic. (Ed.) Cf. 122n19. †29 This is the work which it is Prof. Royce's duty to give to the world, and the world's bounden duty to aid Royce to produce, no matter how many dimes, cents, and dollars it may cost.
Chapter 7: Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science (Ed.) Paragraphs 132-152 are the review, "Pearson's Grammar of Science, Annotations on the First Three Chapters" (second edition, Adams and Charles Black, London, 1900, 548 pp.), The Popular Science Monthly 58(Jan 1901)296-306, with added quotations in 136n3 and 138n4. Paragraphs 153-156 and 136n3 are from a partial draft of this review, Widener IV, dated c.1900 on the basis of the dates of the book and the published review. Cf. Peirce's review of the first edition, [Bibliography] N-1892-10 and the brief notice of the second edition, [Bibliography] N-1900-12. †1
§1. The Justification of Scientific Research
132. If any follower of Dr. Pearson thinks that in the observations I am about to make I am not sufficiently respectful to his master, I can assure him that without a high opinion of his powers I should not have taken the trouble to make these annotations, and without a higher opinion still, I should not have used the bluntness which becomes the impersonal discussions of mathematicians.
133. An introductory chapter of ethical content sounds the dominant note of the book. The author opens with the declaration that our conduct ought to be regulated by the Darwinian theory. Since that theory is an attempt to show how natural causes tend to impart to stocks of animals and plants characters which, in the long run, promote reproduction and thus insure the continuance of those stocks, it would seem that making Darwinism the guide of conduct ought to mean that the continuance of the race is to be taken as the summum bonum, and 'Multiplicamini' as the epitome of the moral law. Professor Pearson, however, understands the matter a little differently, expressing himself thus: "The sole reason [for encouraging] any form of human activity . . . lies in this: [its] existence tends to promote the welfare of human society, to increase social happiness, or to strengthen social stability. In the spirit of the age we are bound to question the value of science; to ask in what way it increases the happiness of mankind or promotes social efficiency." (Ed.) The Grammar of Science, p. 8; the brackets are Peirce's. †2
134. The second of these two statements omits the phrase, 'the welfare of human society,' which conveys no definite meaning; and we may, therefore, regard it as a mere diluent, adding nothing to the essence of what is laid down. Strict adhesion to Darwinian principles would preclude the admission of the 'happiness of mankind' as an ultimate aim. For on those principles everything is directed to the continuance of the stock, and the individual is utterly of no account, except in so far as he is an agent of reproduction. Now there is no other happiness of mankind than the happiness of individual men. We must, therefore, regard this clause as logically deleterious to the purity of the doctrine. As to 'social stability,' we all know very well what ideas this phrase is intended to convey to English apprehensions; and it must be admitted that Darwinism, generalized in due measure, may apply to English society the same principles that Darwin applied to breeds. A family in which the standards of that society are not traditional will go under and die out, and thus 'social stability' tends to be maintained.
135. But against the doctrine that social stability is the sole justification of scientific research, whether this doctrine be adulterated or not with the utilitarian clause, I have to object, first, that it is historically false, in that it does not accord with the predominant sentiment of scientific men; second, that it is bad ethics; and, third, that its propagation would retard the progress of science.
136. Professor Pearson does not, indeed, pretend that that which effectually animates the labors of scientific men is any desire 'to strengthen social stability.' Such a proposition would be too grotesque. Yet if it was his business, in treating of the grammar of science, to set forth the legitimate motive to research — as he has deemed it to be — it was certainly also his business, especially in view of the splendid successes of science, to show what has, in fact, moved such men. They have, at all events, not been inspired by a wish either to 'support social stability' or, in the main, to increase the sum of men's pleasures. The man of science has received a deep impression of the majesty of truth, as that to which, sooner or later, every knee must bow. (Ed.) "The scientific man is deeply impressed with the majesty of truth, as something reasonable or intelligible which is bound sooner or later to force itself upon every mind. It is not too much to say that he worships the divine majesty of the power of reasonableness behind the fact. From that sentiment springs his ardent desire to further the discovery of truth. If he cannot discover it himself he wishes to lay a sure foundation from which some successor may come to the truth; — and the more far-reaching and general the particular question that he aims [at], the more it inspires him. It may be that all that he himself expects to ascertain is a minute fact, — say the parallax of a star. But he anticipates that this fact along with many others will ultimately lead to a great discovery. Will not every scientific researcher acknowledge the substantial accuracy of this statement of his motive? "That it is a better motive than that which Prof. Pearson gives as the 'sole reason' for encouraging any form of human activity is easily shown. Every object which ever has been proposed as desirable in itself without any ulterior reason belongs to one or other of three classes. Namely it either consists A. in superinducing upon feeling a particular quality, say pleasure; or B. in extending the existence of some well-known thing, whether one's own life, or some known Creed or community, or what not, — or C. in furthering the realization of some ideal description of a state of things. "The desire for the stability of a particular social organization, say that of Great Britain, is a motive belonging to class B. The desire to further the discovery of truth, by whomsoever may be in a condition to discover it, belongs to class C. So also does the utilitarian end with which Prof. Pearson, following Herbert Spencer, adulterates his Darwinism; for it is highly unjust to confuse utilitarianism with simple hedonism of the pursuit of pleasure. That love for an individual thing, such as the British community, which is necessarily full of faults, is a less rational motive than the desire to realize an ideal state of things is almost too plain for argument. But it may be observed that if pleasure ought to be desired for itself, it is because it is desired; and whether that is a good reason or not, it is a reason; so that it cannot be said that pleasure ought to be desired without any reason. And if we ought to desire the extended existence of any particular object, it must be because that object has some good character, so that again there is a reason. In order to judge of the desire for the realization of a universal ideal, it is necessary to distinguish the character of that ideal; and here again there are three classes: I. The ideal is one which recommends itself to immediate feeling. Such is the utilitarian ideal of the greatest pleasure of the greatest number. But if pleasure itself is good only for a reason, so à fortiori is such a generalization of it. II. The ideal is a generalization of some familiar kind of good; such as the government of altruistic motives, or a state of society in which nothing is wasted. But if such characters are good, it must be because of some feature which renders them so. Besides, they would cease to be good if carried too far. III. The ideal is one whose character cannot be known in advance, so that it can only be defined as the result, whatever it may be, of a process recognized as productive of good. "In order to judge of this third kind of ideal, it is requisite again to subdivide. Any such ideal belongs to one or other of three classes, as follows: i. The natural development of feeling may be recognized as good and its ultimate dictum as the ideal. This is sentimentalism. But if the natural man is so good, it is by virtue of a contingent fact, which constitutes a reason for it. ii. A developmental process of the world of experience may be recognized as good and its ultimate limit as the ideal. iii. Reasoning may be recognized as good, and the reasonable as the ideal." From the partial draft (see 132n1). †3 He has further found that his own mind is sufficiently akin to that truth, to enable him, on condition of submissive observation, to interpret it in some measure. As he gradually becomes better and better acquainted with the character of cosmical truth, and learns that human reason is its issue and can be brought step by step into accord with it, he conceives a passion for its fuller revelation. He is keenly aware of his own ignorance, and knows that personally he can make but small steps in discovery. Yet, small as they are, he deems them precious; and he hopes that by conscientiously pursuing the methods of science he may erect a foundation upon which his successors may climb higher. This, for him, is what makes life worth living and what makes the human race worth perpetuation. The very being of law, general truth, reason — call it what you will — consists in its expressing itself in a cosmos and in intellects which reflect it, and in doing this progressively; and that which makes progressive creation worth doing — so the researcher comes to feel — is precisely the reason, the law, the general truth for the sake of which it takes place.
137. Such, I believe, as a matter of fact, is the motive which effectually works in the man of science. That granted, we have next to inquire which motive is the more rational, the one just described or that which Professor Pearson recommends. The ethical text-books offer us classifications of human motives. But for our present purpose it will suffice to pass in rapid review some of the more prominent ethical classes of motives.
138. A man may act with reference only to the momentary occasion, either from unrestrained desire, or from preference for one desideratum over another, or from provision against future desires, or from persuasion, or from imitative instinct, or from dread of blame, or in awed obedience to an instant command; or he may act according to some general rule restricted to his own wishes, such as the pursuit of pleasure, or self-preservation, or good-will toward an acquaintance, or attachment to home and surroundings, or conformity to the customs of his tribe, or reverence for a law; or, becoming a moralist, he may aim at bringing about an ideal state of things definitely conceived, such as one in which everybody attends exclusively to his own business and interest (individualism), or in which the maximum total pleasure of all beings capable of pleasure is attained (utilitarianism), or in which altruistic sentiments universally prevail (altruism), or in which his community is placed out of all danger (patriotism), or in which the ways of nature are as little modified as possible (naturalism); or he may aim at hastening some result not otherwise known in advance than as that, whatever it may turn out to be, to which some process seeming to him good must inevitably lead, such as whatever the dictates of the human heart may approve (sentimentalism), or whatever would result from every man's duly weighing, before action, the advantages of his every purpose (to which I will attach the nonce-name entelism, distinguishing it and others below by italics), or whatever the historical evolution of public sentiment may decree (historicism), or whatever the operation of cosmical causes may be destined to bring about (evolutionism); or he may be devoted to truth, and may be determined to do nothing not pronounced reasonable, either by his own cogitations (rationalism), or by public discussion (dialecticism), or by crucial experiment; or he may feel that the only thing really worth striving for is the generalizing or assimilating elements in truth, and that either as the sole object in which the mind can ultimately recognize its veritable aim (educationalism), or that which alone is destined to gain universal sway (pancratism), or, finally, he may be filled with the idea that the only reason that can reasonably be admitted as ultimate is that living reason for the sake of which the psychical and physical universe is in process of creation (religionism). (Ed.) In a letter of 14 July 1905 with the salutation, "My dear Russell," Widener VB2a, Peirce says: "Decidedly I must send you my article of Jan 1901 [the present review]. Your summum bonum, 'life,' is probably at bottom about the same as mine, though I view it more concretely. I look upon creation as going on and I believe that such vague idea as we can have of the power of creation is best identified with the idea of theism. So then the ideal would be to be fulfilling our appropriate offices in the work of creation. Or to come down to the practical, every man sees some task cut out for him. Let him do it, and feel that he is doing what God made him in order that he should do." The letter was written to Francis C. Russell, a Chicago attorney and friend. †4
139. This list of ethical classes of motives may, it is hoped, serve as a tolerable sample upon which to base reflections upon the acceptability as ultimate of different kinds of human motives; and it makes no pretension to any higher value. The enumeration has been so ordered as to bring into view the various degrees of generality of motives. It would conduce to our purpose, however, to compare them in other respects. Thus, we might arrange them in reference to the degree to which an impulse of dependence enters into them, from express obedience, generalized obedience, conformity to an external exemplar, action for the sake of an object regarded as external, the adoption of a motive centering on something which is partially opposed to what is present, the balancing of one consideration against another, until we reach such motives as unrestrained desire, the pursuit of pleasure, individualism, sentimentalism, rationalism, educationalism, religionism, in which the element of otherness is reduced to a minimum. Again, we might arrange the classes of motives according to the degree in which immediate qualities of feeling appear in them, from unrestrained desire, through desire present but restrained, action for self, action for pleasure generalized beyond self, motives involving a retro-consciousness of self in outward things, the personification of the community, to such motives as direct obedience, reverence, naturalism, evolutionism, experimentalism, pancratism, religionism, in which the element of self-feeling is reduced to a minimum. But the important thing is to make ourselves thoroughly acquainted, as far as possible from the inside, with a variety of human motives ranging over the whole field of ethics.
140. I will not go further into ethics than simply to remark that all motives that are directed toward pleasure or self-satisfaction, of however high a type, will be pronounced by every experienced person to be inevitably destined to miss the satisfaction at which they aim. This is true even of the highest of such motives, that which Josiah Royce develops in his 'World and Individual.' (Ed.) Cf. Peirce's review of this work, Chapter 6 in the present book. †5 On the other hand, every motive involving dependence on some other leads us to ask for some ulterior reason. The only desirable object which is quite satisfactory in itself without any ulterior reason for desiring it, is the reasonable itself. I do not mean to put this forward as a demonstration; because, like all demonstrations about such matters, it would be a mere quibble, a sheaf of fallacies. I maintain simply that it is an experiential truth.
141. The only ethically sound motive is the most general one; and the motive that actually inspires the man of science, if not quite that, is very near to it — nearer, I venture to believe, than that of any other equally common type of humanity. On the other hand, Professor Pearson's aim, 'the stability of society,' which is nothing but a narrow British patriotism, prompts the cui bono at once. I am willing to grant that England has been for two or three centuries a most precious factor of human development. But there were and are reasons for this. To demand that man should aim at the stability of British society, or of society at large, or the perpetuation of the race, as an ultimate end, is too much. The human species will be extirpated sometime; and when the time comes the universe will, no doubt, be well rid of it. Professor Pearson's ethics are not at all improved by being adulterated with utilitarianism, which is a lower motive still. Utilitarianism is one of the few theoretical motives which has unquestionably had an extremely beneficial influence. But the greatest happiness of the greatest number, as expounded by Bentham, resolves itself into merely superinducing the quality of pleasure upon men's immediate feelings. Now, if the pursuit of pleasure is not a satisfactory ultimate motive for me, why should I enslave myself to procuring it for others? Leslie Stephen's book was far from uttering the last word upon ethics; but it is difficult to comprehend how anybody who has read it reflectively can continue to hold the mixed doctrine that no action is to be encouraged for any other reason than that it either tends to the stability of society or to general happiness.
142. Ethics, as such, is extraneous to a Grammar of Science; but it is a serious fault in such a book to inculcate reasons for scientific research the acceptance of which must tend to lower the character of such research. Science is, upon the whole, at present in a very healthy condition. It would not remain so if the motives of scientific men were lowered. The worst feature of the present state of things is that the great majority of the members of many scientific societies, and a large part of others, are men whose chief interest in science is as a means of gaining money, and who have a contempt, or half-contempt, for pure science. Now, to declare that the sole reason for scientific research is the good of society is to encourage those pseudo-scientists to claim, and the general public to admit, that they, who deal with the applications of knowledge, are the true men of science, and that the theoreticians are little better than idlers.
143. In Chapter II., entitled 'The Facts of Science,' we find that the 'stability of society' is not only to regulate our conduct, but, also, that our opinions have to be squared to it. In section 10 we are told that we must not believe a certain purely theoretical proposition because it is 'anti-social' to do so, and because to do so 'is opposed to the interests of society.' As to the 'canons of legitimate inference' themselves, that are laid down by Professor Pearson, I have no great objection to them. They certainly involve important truths. They are excessively vague and capable of being twisted to support illogical opinions, as they are twisted by their author, and they leave much ground uncovered. But I will not pursue these objections. I do say, however, that truth is truth, whether it is opposed to the interests of society to admit it or not — and that the notion that we must deny what it is not conducive to the stability of British society to affirm is the mainspring of the mendacity and hypocrisy which Englishmen so commonly regard as virtues. I must confess that I belong to that class of scallawags who purpose, with God's help, to look the truth in the face, whether doing so be conducive to the interests of society or not. Moreover, if I should ever attack that excessively difficult problem, 'What is for the true interest of society?' I should feel that I stood in need of a great deal of help from the science of legitimate inference; and, therefore, to avoid running round a circle, I will endeavor to base my theory of legitimate inference upon something less questionable — as well as more germane to the subject — than the true interest of society.
§2. Natural Law
144. The remainder of this chapter on the 'Facts of Science' is taken up with a theory of cognition, in which the author falls into the too common error of confounding psychology with logic. He will have it that knowledge is built up out of sense-impressions — a correct enough statement of a conclusion of psychology. Understood, however, as Professor Pearson understands and applies it, as a statement of the nature of our logical data, of 'the facts of science,' it is altogether incorrect. He tells us that each of us is like the operator at a central telephone office, shut out from the external world, of which he is informed only by sense-impressions. Not at all! Few things are more completely hidden from my observation than those hypothetical elements of thought which the psychologist finds reason to pronounce 'immediate,' in his sense. (Ed.) Cf. 5.213ff., [Bibliography] G-1868-2. †6 But the starting point of all our reasoning is not in those sense-impressions, but in our percepts. When we first wake up to the fact that we are thinking beings and can exercise some control over our reasonings, we have to set out upon our intellectual travels from the home where we already find ourselves. Now, this home is the parish of percepts. It is not inside our skulls, either, but out in the open. It is the external world that we directly observe. What passes within we only know as it is mirrored in external objects. In a certain sense, there is such a thing as introspection; but it consists in an interpretation of phenomena presenting themselves as external percepts. We first see blue and red things. It is quite a discovery when we find the eye has anything to do with them, and a discovery still more recondite when we learn that there is an ego behind the eye, to which these qualities properly belong. Our logically initial data are percepts. Those percepts are undoubtedly purely psychical, altogether of the nature of thought. They involve three kinds of psychical elements, their qualities of feelings, their reaction against my will, and their generalizing or associating element. But all that we find out afterward. I see an inkstand on the table: that is a percept. Moving my head, I get a different percept of the inkstand. It coalesces with the other. What I call the inkstand is a generalized percept, a quasi-inference from percepts, perhaps I might say a composite-photograph of percepts. In this psychical product is involved an element of resistance to me, which I am obscurely conscious of from the first. Subsequently, when I accept the hypothesis of an inward subject for my thoughts, I yield to that consciousness of resistance and admit the inkstand to the standing of an external object. Still later, I may call this in question. But as soon as I do that, I find that the inkstand appears there in spite of me. If I turn away my eyes, other witnesses will tell me that it still remains. If we all leave the room and dismiss the matter from our thoughts, still a photographic camera would show the inkstand still there, with the same roundness, polish and transparency, and with the same opaque liquid within. Thus, or otherwise, I confirm myself in the opinion that its characters are what they are, and persist at every opportunity in revealing themselves, regardless of what you, or I, or any man, or generation of men, may think that they are. That conclusion to which I find myself driven, struggle against it as I may, I briefly express by saying that the inkstand is a real thing. Of course, in being real and external, it does not in the least cease to be a purely psychical product, a generalized percept, like everything of which I can take any sort of cognizance.
145. It might not be a very serious error to say that the facts of science are sense-impressions, did it not lead to dire confusion upon other points. We see this in Chapter III., (Ed.) The title of Chapter III is "The Scientific Law." †7 in whose long meanderings through irrelevant subjects, in the endeavor to make out that there is no rational element in nature, and that the rational element of natural laws is imported into them by the minds of their discoverers, it would be impossible for the author to lose sight entirely of the bearing of the question which he himself has distinctly formulated, if he were not laboring with the confusing effects of his notion that the data of science are the sense-impressions. It does not occur to him that he is laboring to prove that the mind has a marvelous power of creating an element absolutely supernatural — a power that would go far toward establishing a dualism quite antagonistic to the spirit of his philosophy. He evidently imagines that those who believe in the reality of law, or the rational element in nature, fail to apprehend that the data of science are of a psychical nature. He even devotes a section to proving that natural law does not belong to things-in-themselves, as if it were possible to find any philosopher who ever thought it did. Certainly, Kant, who first decked out philosophy with these chaste ornaments of things-in-themselves, was not of that opinion; nor could anybody well hold it after what he wrote. In point of fact, it is not Professor Pearson's opponents but he himself who has not thoroughly assimilated the truth that everything we can in any way take cognizance of is purely mental. This is betrayed in many little ways, as, for instance, when he makes his answer to the question, whether the law of gravitation ruled the motion of the planets before Newton was born, to turn upon the circumstance that the law of gravitation is a formula expressive of the motion of the planets 'in terms of a purely mental conception,' as if there could be a conception of anything not purely mental. Repeatedly, when he has proved the content of an idea to be mental, he seems to think he has proved its object to be of human origin. He goes to no end of trouble to prove in various ways, what his opponent would have granted with the utmost cheerfulness at the outset, that laws of nature are rational; and, having got so far, he seems to think nothing more is requisite than to seize a logical maxim as a leaping pole and lightly skip to the conclusion that the laws of nature are of human provenance. If he had thoroughly accepted the truth that all realities, as well as all figments, are alike of purely mental composition, he would have seen that the question was, not whether natural law is of an intellectual nature or not, but whether it is of the number of those intellectual objects that are destined ultimately to be exploded from the spectacle of our universe, or whether, as far as we can judge, it has the stuff to stand its ground in spite of all attacks. In other words, is there anything that is really and truly a law of nature, or are all pretended laws of nature figments, in which latter case, all natural science is a delusion, and the writing of a grammar of science a very idle pastime?
146. Professor Pearson's theory of natural law is characterized by a singular vagueness and by a defect so glaring as to remind one of the second book of the Novum Organum or of some strong chess-player whose attention has been so riveted upon a part of the board that a fatal danger has, as it were, been held upon the blind-spot of his mental retina. The manner in which the current of thought passes from the woods into the open plain and back again into the woods, over and over again, betrays the amount of labor that has been expended upon the chapter. The author calls attention to the sifting action both of our perceptive and of our reflective faculties. I think that I myself extracted from that vein of thought pretty much all that is valuable in reference to the regularity of nature in the POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY for June, 1878, (p. 208). (Ed.) 6.405ff. †8 I there remarked that the degree to which nature seems to present a general regularity depends upon the fact that the regularities in it are of interest and importance to us, while the irregularities are without practical use or significance; and in the same article I endeavored to show that it is impossible to conceive of nature's being markedly less regular, taking it, 'by and large,' than it actually is. But I am confident, from having repeatedly returned to that line of thought that it is impossible legitimately to deduce from any such considerations the unreality of natural law. 'As a pure suggestion and nothing more,' toward the end of the chapter, after his whole plea has been put in, Dr. Pearson brings forward the idea that a transcendental operation of the perceptive faculty may reject a mass of sensation altogether and arrange the rest in place and time, and that to this the laws in nature may be attributable — a notion to which Kant undoubtedly leaned at one time. The mere emission of such a theory, after his argument has been fully set forth, almost amounts to a confession of failure to prove his proposition. Granting, by way of waiver, that such a theory is intelligible and is more than a nonsensical juxtaposition of terms, so far from helping Professor Pearson's contention at all, the acceptance of it would at once decide the case against him, as every student of the Critic of the Pure Reason will at once perceive. For the theory sets the rationality in nature upon a rock perfectly impregnable by you, me or any company of men.
147. Although that theory is only problematically put forth by Professor Pearson, yet at the very outset of his argumentation he insists upon the relativity of regularity to our faculties, as if that were in some way pertinent to the question. "Our law of tides," he says, "could have no meaning for a blind worm on the shore, for whom the moon had no existence." (Ed.) The Grammar of Science, p. 85. †9 Quite so; but would that truism in any manner help to prove that the moon was a figment and no reality? On the contrary, it could only help to show that there may be more things in heaven and earth than your philosophy has dreamed of. Now the moon, on the one hand, and the law of the tides, on the other, stand in entirely analogous positions relatively to the remark, which can no more help to prove the unreality of the one than of the other. So, too, the final decisive stroke of the whole argumentation consists in urging substantially the same idea in the terrible shape of a syllogism, which the reader may examine in section 11. I will make no comment upon it.
148. Professor Pearson's argumentation rests upon three legs. The first is the fact that both our perceptive and our reflective faculties reject part of what is presented to them, and 'sort out' the rest. Upon that, I remark that our minds are not, and cannot be, positively mendacious. To suppose them so is to misunderstand what we all mean by truth and reality. Our eyes tell us that some things in nature are red and others blue; and so they really are. For the real world is the world of insistent generalized percepts. It is true that the best physical idea which we can at present fit to the real world, has nothing but longer and shorter waves to correspond to red and blue. But this is evidently owing to the acknowledged circumstance that the physical theory is to the last degree incomplete, if not to its being, no doubt, in some measure, erroneous. For surely the completed theory will have to account for the extraordinary contrast between red and blue. In a word, it is the business of a physical theory to account for the percepts; and it would be absurd to accuse the percepts — that is to say, the facts — of mendacity because they do not square with the theory.
149. The second leg of the argumentation is that the mind projects its worked-over impressions into an object, and then projects into that object the comparisons, etc., that are the results of its own work. I admit, of course, that errors and delusions are everyday phenomena, and hallucinations not rare. We have just three means at our command for detecting any unreality, that is, lack of insistency, in a notion. First, many ideas yield at once to a direct effort of the will. We call them fancies. Secondly, we can call in other witnesses, including ourselves under new conditions. Sometimes dialectic disputation will dispel an error. At any rate, it may be voted down so overwhelmingly as to convince even the person whom it affects. Thirdly, the last resort is prediction and experimentation. Note that these two are equally essential parts of this method, which Professor Pearson keeps — I had almost said sedulously — out of sight in his discussion of the rationality of nature. He only alludes to it when he comes to his transcendental 'pure suggestion.' Nothing is more notorious than that this method of prediction and experimentation has proved the master-key to science; and yet, in Chapter IV., (Ed.) The title of Chapter IV is "Cause and Effect — Probability." †10 Professor Pearson tries to persuade us that prediction is no part of science, which must only describe sense-impressions. (A sense-impression cannot be described.) He does not say that he would permit generalization of the facts. He ought not to do so, since generalization inevitably involves prediction.
150. The third leg of the argumentation is that human beings are so much alike that what one man perceives and infers another man will be likely to perceive and infer. This is a recognized weakness of the second of the above methods. It is by no means sufficient to destroy that method, but along with other defects it does render resort to the third method imperative. When I see Dr. Pearson passing over without notice the first and third of the only three possible ways of distinguishing whether the rationality of nature is real or not, and giving a lame excuse for reversing the verdict of the second, so that his decision seems to spring from antecedent predilection, I cannot recommend his procedure as affording such an exemplar of the logic of science as one might expect to find in a grammar of science.
151. An ignorant sailor on a desert island lights in some way upon the idea of the parallelogram of forces, and sets to work making experiments to see whether the actions of bodies conform to that formula. He finds that they do so, as nearly as he can observe, in many trials invariably. He wonders why inanimate things should thus conform to a widely general intellectual formula. Just then, a disciple of Professor Pearson lands on the island and the sailor asks him what he thinks about it. "It is very simple," says the disciple, "you see you made the formula and then you projected it into the phenomena." Sailor: What are the phenomena? Pearsonist: The motions of the stones you experimented with. Sailor: But I could not tell until afterward whether the stones had acted according to the rule or not. Pearsonist: That makes no difference. You made the rule by looking at some stones, and all stones are alike. Sailor: But those I used were very unlike, and I want to know what made them all move exactly according to one rule. Pearsonist: Well, maybe your mind is not in time, and so you made all the things behave the same way at all times. Mind, I don't say it is so; but it may be. Sailor: Is that all you know about it? Why not say the stones are made to move as they do by something like my mind?
152. When the disciple gets home, he consults Dr. Pearson. "Why," says Dr. Pearson, "you must not deny that the facts are really concatenated; only there is no rationality about that." "Dear me," says the disciple, "then there really is a concatenation that makes all the component accelerations of all the bodies scattered through space conform to the formula that Newton, or Lami, or Varignon invented?" "Well, the formula is the device of one of those men, and it conforms to the facts." "To the facts its inventor knew, and also to those he only predicted?" "As for prediction, it is unscientific business." "Still the prediction and the facts predicted agree." "Yes." "Then," says the disciple, "it appears to me that there really is in nature something extremely like action in conformity with a highly general intellectual principle." "Perhaps so," I suppose Dr. Pearson would say, "but nothing in the least like rationality." "Oh," says the disciple, "I thought rationality was conformity to a widely general principle."
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153. To sum up my objections. Prof. Pearson mistakes sense-impressions, which are psychological inferences, for the logical data, and is thus led to confuse his thought in this chapter with matters totally irrelevant to the question which he clearly puts. He fancies that his antagonists fail to apprehend the psychical side of the subject; but in fact it is he himself who has not thoroughly assimilated the truth that everything that we can in any way take cognizance of is purely mental. This is a truth, because every object of thought is either a percept or a generalization, that is, an inference from percepts. I am conscious that my meaning here is but vaguely expressed, because I use the word "generalization" in a generalized sense. Unfortunately, I cannot explain myself without tedious developments of exact logic into which I cannot here enter. Meantime, though my meaning can, perhaps, be but dimly apprehended, still it can be sufficiently understood for the purpose in hand. Prof. Pearson, not having fully assimilated the truth that every object is purely mental or psychical, thinks that when he has shown that the content of natural law is intellectual, he is entitled to conclude that it is of human origin. But every scientific research goes upon the assumption, the hope, that, in reference to its particular question, there is some true answer. That which that truth represents is a reality. This reality being cognizable and comprehensible, is of the nature of thought. Wherein, then, does its reality consist? In the fact that, though it has no being out of thought, yet it is as it is, whether you or I or any group of men think it to be so or not. The question of whether Hamlet was insane is the question whether Shakespeare conceived him to be insane. Consequently, Hamlet is a figment and not a reality. But as to the inkstand being on my table, though I should succeed in persuading myself and all who have seen it that it is a mere optical illusion, yet there will be a limit to this, and by the photographic camera, the balance, new witnesses, etc., it will, at last, I guess, force its recognition upon the world. If so, it has the characteristic which we call reality. There is a blind force about the inkstand by which it crowds its way into our universe in spite of all we can do. Prof. Pearson has no difficulty in showing, what his opponents are eager to have him commit himself to, that law is of an intellectual or rational nature; but he slides swiftly and lightly over the passage from that position to its having been introduced into the object by the scientist's own mind. But here is the whole question. Is law real or is it figment? Psychical of course it is; for every thing we can cognize is purely psychical. Intellectual or rational it plainly is. But the question is whether it is among those intellectual objects that are destined ultimately to be exploded from the spectacle of the universe, or whether, as far as we can judge, it has the force to stand its ground indefinitely. It seems clear, to begin with, that to prove law a figment would be to prove all science to be a delusion and a Grammar of Science an idle pastime. Prof. Pearson is very likely quite right when, in a later chapter, he suggests that the law of the parallelogram of forces is not perfectly true. His reasons have great weight. I, for my part, do not believe that any law is perfectly satisfied. If I am right in this, the reality of law is diminished; but it is not thereby abolished. But my argument to show that law is reality and not figment, — is in nature independently of any connivance of ours, — is that predictions are verified. Nobody will maintain that these verifications are chance coincidences. Nor can Prof. Pearson explain how Newton and Laplace have been influential in producing eclipses at the moments they were called for by theory. He does not attempt it. He tells us he admits that phenomena are "concatenated," but that he can see in that nothing that, in any intelligible sense, can be called rational. Here again, I take issue. "Concatenation" is not a fair word in this connection. For "concatenation" implies contiguity in some sense, through which some unintelligible action and reaction can take place. But the different cases in which a law is verified are not connected by contiguity but by resemblance, and that of a very abstract kind. Their connection consists merely in this, that wherever it may be that a certain very broad but definite resemblance occurs, there also resemblance in another definite respect occurs. Now how would you define a reason if not as a very broad definite character which makes us expect the occurrence of another definite character? If Prof. Pearson does not accept this statement, then, since he maintains that there is nothing at all mysterious about law, it was his business to say how he proposed to account for what he very ill describes as the concatenation of sense-impressions, that is to say, the conformity of widely scattered phenomena to the predictions of the scientist. Not to account for it at all, is simply to leave it as a conformity to a rational formula, and therefore as a real reasonableness in nature.
154. From most of the other chapters in the book I should altogether dissent, and most especially from the account of probability in Chapter IV. But I shall, at this time, notice only two small points connected with the above remarks.
155. In Chapter IV., Prof. Pearson declares that the sole business of science is to describe past experience and not at all to predict the future. This is entirely contrary to the universal opinion of men of science, in whose eyes prediction is the seal of success. Neither can it please those who have been led to expect from the introductory chapter that science would be of some practical service. It would be a maxim utterly blighting to all further progress of science, were it accepted, since it is only by predictions that men are led to devise new experiments. According to this doctrine, scientists should print their notebooks, and do no more. But evidently, science has, not so much to describe experience, as to generalize it. To generalize it is to comprehend it. Moreover, generalization refuses to limit itself to the past, but involves virtual prediction.
156. In the same chapter, the author says that the why of things remains a mystery. He quotes with approval a sentence from Kirchhoff's Mechanik to the effect that dynamics is the description, in the simplest terms, of motions. This, except for its indeterminacy, is well enough. But he omits to mention that Kirchhoff goes on to say that what Force is must remain a mystery. But according to my notions there can be no mystery in the universe, in the sense of a real fact to which no approach to knowledge can ever be gained. For a reality is an idea that insists upon proclaiming itself, whether we like it or not. There may be a question that no amount of research can ever answer. If so, there is a lacuna in the completeness of reality. But these things usually called mysteries are simply cases in which questions cannot be answered for the reason that no definite meaning can be attached to them. If, for example, we know exactly under what circumstances bodies are accelerated, and what the resulting changes of velocity and position are, you must say definitely what further experience you wish to predict before you talk about a mystery.
Chapter 8: Review of a Book on Ethics (Ed.) Review of Sidney Edward Mezes' Ethics: Descriptive and Explanatory (Macmillan, 1901, 435 pp.), The Nation 73(24 Oct 1901)325-326, with an added quotation in 158n3 from an alternative draft, Widener IV, dated 1901 on the basis of the dates of the book and the published review. †1
157. Professor Mezes of the University of Texas has been known to the general public as a scholar of Howison, and as one of the four authors of the sympotic book, 'The Conception of God.' He there produced upon us a mixed impression, for his intellect seemed not to have quite so keen an edge as is called for in philosophy; and yet here and there conceptions appeared so simple and obvious, and yet so novel, that one ransacked one's memory in the endeavor to recall any anticipation of the remark. Much the same impression is renewed by the present book. Hard work and solid has been put into it; and, of course, the harvest must have proportionate value. Parts of the treatise are admirably worked out, and are, at any rate, instructive, even if their conclusions are rejected. But hard work is not all that is required in dealing with such a subject.
158. In aim and method the present work is fully as original as it ought to be. The author belongs to that school of ethics which is probably nearest right — that is to say, to the school which makes tribal tradition a main factor of morality, and which is thus enabled to frame an evolutionary theory of it. But although the author is thus in the van of ethical exploration, a certain old-fashioned and conservative color — attributable, perhaps, to temperament and Texan environment — strongly tinges his theory. Now, conservatism in morals is most needful in practice, and, of course, is theoretically defensible. (Ed.) Cf. 1.661ff. †2 But that defence itself is not conservative: on the contrary, it is rationalistic; and in pure theory, especially in a theory of aims, conservatism is irrational and out of place. The writer effects a reconciliation of his conservatism (which is very likely unconscious) with his advanced views by exaggerating more than usual a prevalent tendency which we venture to think that the majority of philosophers of our day carry too far — we mean the tendency to base everything in philosophy upon the psychical sciences. The immense success of scientific psychology during the last forty years has very naturally given it a weight in men's minds that ought not in philosophy to be accorded to any merely special science, which is precisely what psychology has all along been striving and struggling to be. (Ed.) "The immense success of scientific psychology during the last forty years has naturally given it a weight that a merely special science, which is precisely what it has all along been aiming to be, ought not to have in philosophy. The special sciences must be built upon philosophy; and consequently if philosophy has no deeper support than a special science, the whole rests on air. The first duty of ethics is to show us what we really do desire and are willing to accept as good, without any ulterior reason. This is a question of fact, and the solution of the problem must be based upon experience. But it is no recondite scientific experience which is wanted; but what is well-known and accepted by all men, philosophers, scientific men, and all others, unanimously. It is not a question of how the mind acts. On the contrary, it is only after the moralist has shown us what is our ultimate aim that the logician can tell how we ought to think in order to conform to that end. It is only on a scientific logic that a trustworthy metaphysics can be erected; and that the psychologist does and must take a metaphysics for granted is now generally admitted. Thus, the fundamental part, at least, of ethics — what might be called pure ethics, — ought to precede psychology. Prof. Mezes, however, is not content even to base ethics upon psychology, but must needs go to the still more special science of anthropology to find a support for it." From the alternative draft (see 157n1). †3 On the contrary, it is now generally admitted that psychology, like general physics, necessarily takes for granted a Weltanschauung or outline system of metaphysics. Now, metaphysics can have no satisfactory grounding except upon a scientific logic; and logic rests on ethics to a degree that few are aware of. So if there be no other basis for ethics than psychology, which is a third story above it, the whole erection floats on air. Ethics as a positive science must rest on observed facts. But it is quite a different thing to make it rest on special scientific observation, and still more so to base it upon scientific conclusions. The only solid foundation for ethics lies in those facts of everyday life which no skeptical philosopher ever yet really called in question.
159. Now, Mr. Mezes is so far from taking this view that he maintains that the whole business of the moralist consists in saying what men mean by morality, in describing what they hold to be moral, and in explaining how they come to do so. This is a most interesting and valuable study, but it is ethical anthropology, not pure ethics; and to limit ethics in this way is to be faithless to the first duty of a moralist, as such. "Ethical writers do not in any proper sense," he says, meaning that they overstep the bounds of their province when they do, "judge conduct or issue pronouncements as to what is right or wrong. Their more modest task is to discover and record men's genuine judgments as to what is right or wrong." (Ed.) Ethics, p. 7. †4 Let us see how this view of ethics works. A judge, let us suppose, has brought before him a case in which a man has suffered injury for which he claims damages of another. Whether damages ought to be paid in such a case is often, we know, a delicate and puzzling question. We will follow Professor Mezes in using a much too simple illustration, which ought to puzzle nobody. "Take," he says, "the case where A's cattle break out of their enclosure, in spite of A's having used all the care he reasonably could have used, or could learn to use, and destroy B's valuable crop in an adjoining field." (Ed.) Ethics, p. 34. †5 This case (or rather another far more difficult) puzzles the judge, and he takes it under advisement. He naturally looks into works on ethics, and, finding nothing pertinent in modern books, is driven to the scholastic treatises. Now, there is nothing in the whole scholastic logic more justly an object of derision for any modern thinker than its weak confusion of thought in its doctrine of causes; nor in that whole doctrine is there any more manifest absurdity than the distinction between a proximate and a remote cause. When we meet with an application of it in the scholastic commentary on the Sentences, it stands out as so much more nonsensical than the rest as to be comical; but that anybody should be made to suffer because of any consequence of such metaphysical jargon is outrageous flippancy. Yet it is just this outrage that the judge is driven to commit, or to pretend to commit, because the ethical writers have not expounded right and wrong in a sufficiently luminous and reasonable form.
160. Professor Mezes follows them. He maintains that A, the owner of the cattle, ought to reimburse B for the injury done by them to his crop, because A is the proximate cause of B's suffering. If he would not follow the decisions of Texas courts as the ultimate evidence concerning right and wrong, he could not fail to see that the real reason why the judge awards damages to B is that to allow a private person to undertake a business humanly sure in the long run to injure his neighbors (and all the more so if he "cannot learn to use" suitable preventive measures), and then to allow him to pocket all the profits, and make his neighbors pay for incidental losses, would be to bring himself and his court into public contempt and into no little danger. That was the judge's real reason. But in days gone by (perhaps not yet in Texas) if a judge could decide a case justly, and yet by a process of metaphysical reasoning the less intelligible the better, he was regarded with awe by the vulgar; and that was one motive for his seizing upon that argument when he could get no modern light.
161. One of the distinctive features of Professor Mezes's book is a seventy-page chapter on Justice, in which legal decisions are followed, often in a way which will be repugnant to right-minded readers, and yet not so exclusively that the chapter can be said to constitute an exposition of the traditional legal conception of justice. Professor Mezes defines ultimate good as "the welfare of all sentient beings," but he is doubtful whether it is worth while to have any regard for the welfare either of bacilli (are these sentient beings in Texas?) or of criminals of all classes. The last exclusion is characteristic, we are sorry to say. But when we ask what he means by "welfare," in place of a definition, nothing is vouchsafed but a division of "welfare," in which there are two or three dozen items, such as "easy activity," "sense of personal attractiveness," "sense of solvency," "satisfaction from social standing," "sense of divine favor," "national pride," "self-control," "a body of well-poised spontaneous activities," "systematic ideas of rights and duties," "sagacity." (Ed.) Ethics, Chapter XV, "Welfare," pp. 383-409; see especially "Table of Components of Individual Welfare," p. 400. †6 There are those who will think that all this is on a pretty low plane, and we do not see much in the list about the welfare of earthworms, etc., notwithstanding the insistence upon "all sentient beings."
162. The best thing in the book is the psychological analysis of conscience, which is decidedly noticeable. We could hardly have expected the terminology to be reformed. The scholastic writers mark two things which they distinguish by the terms synderesis and conscience (the latter nearly in the sense in which it is a household word). The interest of progress in ethical discussion calls upon us to come to agreement about the use of technical terms. But each of us is attached to his own habit, and will not surrender it unless it can be shown clearly to violate a law to which he has given in his allegiance. A code of rules is needed, in framing which we cannot do better than to be guided by the taxonomists, who have had, of all men, most experience in dealing with similar difficulties. If we do that, our first rule, subject, perhaps, to a few general but well-defined classes of exceptions (the fewer the better), will certainly be that every technical term of philosophy ought to be used in that sense in which it first became a technical term of philosophy. This will, generally speaking, result in the greatest accord between the language of philosophy and the vernacular, of which the word conscience will be an example. As for that other thing which a good many moralists call conscience, some other name ought to be given to it, preferably a new word. At any rate, not synderesis, of which the original meaning, we are convinced, is not that which Siebeck assigns to it. Professor Mezes, whose definitions are mostly of doubtful accuracy, distinguishes between conscience about others' acts and conscience about one's own. But a stay-at-home conscience does the most to render earth habitable.
163. As we rise from the reading of the whole book, we find ourselves saying, If this is what morality is, we are disposed to sympathize with Henry James, the elder, in his very limited respect for morality.
Chapter 9: J. M. Baldwin, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, Vol. II (Ed.) Paragraphs 164-166 and 167 (in part) are from the review of James Mark Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, Vol. II (Macmillan, 1902, 892 pp.), The Nation 76(11 June 1903)482. Paragraphs 167 ( in part) and 168-170 are from an alternative draft, Widener IV, dated c.1903 on the basis of the dates of the book and of the published review. †1
164. Many evidences of different kinds reach us of the good service that this work is already rendering, notwithstanding the imperfections inevitable in any such composite book, and notwithstanding its lack of those formal perfections and uniformities upon which our American dictionaries and cyclopaedias are apt to insist to the neglect of the weightier matters of the law, to the point of leaving them dry, innutritious, and unvitalizing. Professor Baldwin, in the preface of this concluding volume (of the Dictionary proper), puts forth more an excuse than a defence for one of the few features of it that have been disapproved in almost every quarter; urging that the diminutive biographical notices which he has scattered through the vocabulary are that half-loaf that is said to be better than no bread. This hardly meets the stricture commonly made, which was to the effect that the entire omission of these supererogatory crumbs would have left room that might either have been filled to better purpose, or to better purpose have lightened the avoirdupois of the volumes.
165. But a more interesting question suggests itself. Upwards of seventy of the most reputable philosophers (Ed.) Peirce was one of the contributors; cf. [Bibliography] G-1901-6. †2 whose services a distinguished editor could secure, have here set down their opinions upon the special points of philosophy of which they are reputed best qualified to treat. They have not argued their doctrines, since this is a dictionary, not a cyclopaedia; but they have defined them. All the principal groups of schools are more or less represented in the assemblage of contributors; even the idealists, whose showing is probably the least adequate. One naturally peruses their utterances to see what impression one can derive from them as to the prevalent tendencies of philosophy at the opening of the twentieth century; for surely this is an aspect under which it may be hoped that this dictionary will never lose its interest.
166. The most prominent of the philosophical signs of the times, as here displayed — so it strikes us, at least — is the manifest strenuous endeavor of the students of every department of philosophy to impart a "scientific" character each to his own particular branch, i.e., to make it conform to the conditions which have caused the success of the modern acknowledged sciences. The progress is satisfactory. At least one branch of psychology has already taken its place among the special sciences, whose array others are well upon the way toward joining. The movement is not confined to psychology. There is much of a scientific character in ethics; and the critical part of logic has, in some hands at least, come to submit itself to the same criteria as those that have long been acknowledged in science. There seems every reason for hope concerning metaphysics and other branches.
167. Another mark of our philosophy is the disposition to make psychology the key to philosophy — categories, aesthetics, ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Something of this has existed since Descartes; but since about 1863 every student of philosophy, even though he be one of those who consider the present psychological tendency excessive, has placed a new and higher estimate than before upon the scientific value of psychology. Here was seen one science, than which no branch of philosophy, in the days when men disputed about the primum cognitum, was more enveloped in metaphysical fog, which yet almost suddenly, that mist lifting, had come out bright and clear as a June forenoon. How could it but happen, as it certainly did, that men should think that the best way to resolve any problem of philosophy would be to reduce it to a question of psychology? The future must determine precisely what the value of this method may be. It has its opponents. For some years after the movement once became general, no strong voice was raised against it; and ten or fifteen years ago psychologists of the first rank could dream of establishing the truths of their science without any metaphysical assumptions whatsoever. Some writers use such language even yet; but careful examination has convinced the better part that even physics has its metaphysical postulates, and that psychology is peculiarly dependent upon them. (Ed.) The remainder of the review is from parts of the manuscript, rearranged by the editor. †3 That being the case, some writers urge that if psychology needs to rest upon metaphysics, and metaphysics upon logic, especially if, as some contend, logic rests upon ethics, then to found ethics, logic, and metaphysics in their turn upon a basis of psychology, this self-supporting cycle would rest on nothing. The reply is that the philosophical sciences will support each other, like two drunken sailors. Suffice it to say that the mutual support theory and with it the theory that psychology is the proper foundation for philosophy are not now without vigorous opponents.
168. A third symptom of the philosophy of the day is a reaction against the general agnostic tendency of a generation ago. Many are beginning to feel that the only possible justification for a hypothesis is that it renders the facts comprehensible, and that to suppose them absolutely incomprehensible (which is what the doctrine of the Unknowable comes to) is not rendering them comprehensible. This seems to point toward some new incarnation of the idea of the old philosophy of common sense. In this connection it may be noticed that the theory of psychophysical parallelism is distinctly losing followers. Minds cannot reconcile themselves to the notion that consciousness stands and idle spectator of human conduct. Besides, the new logic of quantity, which Cantor, Whitehead and others have made irrefragable, shows that even though matter acts directly only upon matter and thought acts directly only upon thought, and though there be no tertium quid, it by no means follows that thought does not act upon matter nor that matter does not act upon thought. What if it should turn out that the atoms of matter were vortices of an ether, which ether is itself comprised of atoms each a vortex of an ether's ether; and so on ad infinitum; and what if mind had a similar constitution? It then might happen that upon an endless series of physical operations occurring in a fraction of a second should ensue a beginningless series of mental operations. Now it is to no purpose to say that this is improbable. If it is possible, as it certainly is, that suffices to show that mind and matter might, without contradiction, interact, although each could directly act only upon its own kind of substance. To the same general tendency belongs an opinion, now very common, that it is unscientific to inquire whether there be a God; the only rational question being what sort of God there is. With this is naturally associated the further opinion that instead of its being shallow philosophy to suppose an "anthropomorphic" God, if by "anthropomorphic" be meant mental, it is far more consonant with the method of science to formulate the problem by asking what sort of a mind God is; and if we cannot in some measure understand God's mind, all science, it is said with some color of justice, must be a delusion and a snare.
169. There is one more lineament of contemporary philosophy which, trivial as it may seem, is worth mention when a dictionary is our theme. It is that the days of literary style in philosophy seem to be numbered. The philosophy of the future must, like the other sciences, be put forth chiefly in the form of memoirs; and it is a truism to say that a memoir written in an ornate style would be as ridiculous as if it were in rhyming pentameters. From this follows another truism, that there is a good style and a bad style for a scientific memoir. Philosophy cannot become scientifically healthy without an immense technical vocabulary. We can hardly imagine our great-grandsons turning over the leaves of this dictionary without amusement over the paucity of words with which their grandsires attempted to handle metaphysics and logic. Long before that day, it will have become indispensably requisite, too, that each of these terms should be confined to a single meaning which, however broad, must be free from all vagueness. This will involve a revolution in terminology; for in its present condition a philosophical thought of any precision can seldom be expressed without lengthy explanations. Already, when philosophy is only just beginning to resemble science, the influx of new terms is getting to be considerable. One of the chief purposes of this dictionary seems to have been to fix the use of them. Before long philosophers will find themselves confronted with a Babel such as zoölogists and botanists have had to contend with; and scientific progress will be hampered until something like uniformity of usage has been attained. What is to be done? Shall we go on, laissant faire, until we find our terminology in an inextricable snarl, and then call in an Alexander to cut the knot with some Volapük system? Such would perhaps be the dictate of our glorious Anglo-Saxon genius, which has endowed us, for example, with the word bushel, whose meaning in any given State of the Union, for any given commodity, can be ascertained by simply consulting a table of double-entry, and has given us that admirable word inch, which cannot now be changed at a cost of less than a hundred million dollars. Or shall [we] take time by the forelock, imitate the French, with their metric system, their Academy, their Code Napoleon, their Guyton de Morveau (with his chemical nomenclature, now universal, after modification), their minute regulation of everything, and agree upon how the battle shall be fought before we find ourselves actually engaged in it? In the weightier matters of the law the French are none too moral a people; but for the ethics of the mint and cummin, the ought and ought not of manner and fashions, and other forms of expression, they lead, and the rest of the world, after duly prolonged demurs, generally ends by following them.
170. We must expect arduous labours yet to be performed before philosophy can work its way out of the jungle and emerge upon the high road of science. But the prospect is no longer so desperately gloomy, if philosophers will only resign themselves to the toilsome procedure of science, and recognize that a single generation can make little headway, but yet may faithfully clear away a few obstacles, and lying down to die, resign the axe to their successors.
Chapter 10: Lady Welby, What is Meaning? (Ed.) Paragraphs 171-175 are the review of Lady Victoria Welby's What is Meaning? (Macmillan, 1903, 321 pp.), The Nation 77(15 Oct 1903)308-309. Paragraph 176 is from the Lowell Lectures of 1903 (from Lecture I, Vol. 2, following shortly after 1.611-615), Widener IB2-4, with an added quotation in 176n3. Paragraphs 177-185 are from a long manuscript, undated, in Widener IB3a. The references in it indicate that this manuscript is part of a letter, but the extant part contains neither salutation nor signature. This manuscript required more editorial changes in punctuation, etc., than most of the manuscripts printed in the present volume. Cf. the correspondence with Lady Welby in Book II of the present volume. The review of Lady Welby's book in The Nation was combined with a brief mention of Bertrand Russell's The Principles of Mathematics, Vol. I (University Press, Cambridge; Macmillan, New York, 1903, 534 pp.). The combined review begins with the following paragraph: "Two really important works on logic are these; or, at any rate, they deserve to become so, if readers will only do their part towards it. Yet it is almost grotesque to name them together, so utterly disparate are their characters. This is not the place to speak of Mr. Russell's book, which can hardly be called literature. That he should continue these most severe and scholastic labors for so long, bespeaks a grit and industry, as well as a high intelligence, for which more than one of his ancestors have been famed. Whoever wishes a convenient introduction to the remarkable researches into the logic of mathematics that have been made during the last sixty years, and that have thrown an entirely new light both upon mathematics and upon logic, will do well to take up this book. But he will not find it easy reading. Indeed, the matter of the second volume will probably consist, at least nine-tenths of it, of rows of symbols." The remainder of the review is printed below. †1
171. Lady Victoria Welby's little volume is not what one would understand by a scientific book. It is not a treatise, and is free from the slightest shade of pedantry or pretension. Different people will estimate its value very differently. It is a feminine book, and a too masculine mind might think parts of it painfully weak. We should recommend the male reader to peruse chapters xxii. to xxv. before he reads the whole consecutively, for they will bear a second reading. The question discussed in these chapters is how primitive men ever came to believe in their absurd superstitions. This has generally been supposed to be the simplest of questions. Lady Victoria does not deign to mention La Fontaine's pretty fable (the sixth of the ninth book; the whole of it is worth rereading if you have forgotten it) of the sculptor and his statue of Jove:
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"L'artisan exprima si bien |
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Le caractére de l'Idole, |
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Qu'on trouva qu'il ne manquait rien |
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A Jupiter que la parole. |
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. . . . . . . . . . |
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"Même l'on dit que l'ouvrier |
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Eut à peine achevé l'image, |
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Qu'on le vit frémir le premier, |
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Et redouter son propre ouvrage. |
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. . . . . . . . . . |
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"Il était enfant en ceci: |
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Les enfants n'ont l'âme occupée |
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Que du continuel souci |
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Qu'on ne fâche point leur poupée. |
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"Le coeur suit aisément l'esprit. |
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De cette source est descendue |
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L'erreur payenne qui se vit |
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Chez tant de peuples répandue. |
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. . . . . . . . . . |
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"Chacun tourne en réalités, |
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Autant qu'il peut, ses propres songes. |
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L'homme est de glace aux vérités; |
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Il est de feu pour les mensonges." |
172. La Fontaine's theory is somewhat complex, and allows more to the artistic impulse than modern ethnologists have done. They make mythology rather an attempt at a philosophical explanation of phenomena. But the authoress shows by a painstaking analysis that all such theories — La Fontaine's and the new current ones alike — are fatally irreconcilable with those traits of the primitive mind that have struck Tylor, Spencer, and ethnologists generally, as the deepest graven. In place of them she offers a hypothesis of her own, and the reader is tempted to lose patience with her for regarding it only as provisional, so strongly does it recommend itself, until she presents quite another view which one must admit has its plausibility.
173. The greatest service the book can render is that of bringing home the question which forms its title, a very fundamental question of logic, which has commonly received superficial, formalistic replies. Its vital and far-reaching significance has been even more ignored than usually happens with matters of universal and ubiquitous concern. To direct attention to the subject as one requiring study, both on its theoretical and on its practical side, is the essential purpose of the work. But in doing this the authoress has incidentally made a contribution towards the answer to the question, in pointing out three orders of signification. She has wisely abstained from any attempt at formal definitions of these three modes of signification. She tells us what she means only in the lowest of those three senses. To have gone further would have shunted her off upon a long and needless discussion.
174. One can see, though she does not remark it, that her three kinds of meaning correspond roughly to Hegel's three stages of thought. Her distinction, too, partly coincides with what was long ago said, that to understand a word or formula may, in the first place, consist in such familiarity with it as will enable one to apply it correctly; or secondly, may consist in an abstract analysis of the conception or understanding of its intellectual relations to other concepts; or, thirdly, may consist in a knowledge of the possible phenomenal and practical upshot of the assertion of the concept. (Ed.) Cf. "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," 5.388-410. †2 We might point out other interesting affiliations of her thought, sufficient to show that she must be on the right track.
175. Lady Victoria, however, does not wish the matter to be agitated in the logician's study alone. She urges that people do not sufficiently take to heart the ethics of language. She thinks that modern conceptions call for a modern imagery of speech. But we fear that she does not realize how deep the knife would have to go into the body of speech to make it really scientific. We should have to form words like those the chemists use — if they can be called words. In particular, she preaches making logic — "significs," she calls it, but it would be logic — the basis or core of education. All those ideals deserve to be pondered. The book is very rich in illustrations drawn from contemporary writing.
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176. A little book by Lady Victoria Welby has lately appeared, entitled "What is Meaning." The book has sundry merits, among them that of showing that there are three modes of meaning. But the best feature of it is that it presses home the question "What is Meaning." A word has meaning for us in so far as we are able to make use of it in communicating our knowledge to others and in getting at the knowledge that these others seek to communicate to us. That is the lowest grade of meaning. The meaning of a word is more fully the sum total of all the conditional predictions which the person who uses it intends to make himself responsible for or intends to deny. That conscious or quasi-conscious intention in using the word is the second grade of meaning. But besides the consequences to which the person who accepts a word knowingly commits himself to, there is a vast ocean of unforeseen consequences which the acceptance of the word is destined to bring about, not merely consequences of knowing but perhaps revolutions of society. One cannot tell what power there may be in a word or a phrase to change the face of the world; and the sum of these consequences makes up the third grade of meaning. (Ed.) Cf. "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," 5.388-410. In his application for a grant from the Carnegie Institution, 1902, Widener VB5, Peirce describes his proposed thirty-second memoir, On Definition and the Clearness of Ideas, as follows: "In January, 1878, I published a brief sketch of this subject wherein I enunciated a certain maxim of 'Pragmatism,' which has of late attracted some attention, as indeed, it had when it appeared in the Journal Philosophique. I still adhere to that doctrine; but it needs more accurate definition in order to meet certain objections and to avoid certain misapplications. Moreover, my paper of 1878 was imperfect in tacitly leaving it to appear that the maxim of pragmatism led to the last stage of clearness. I wish now to show that this is not the case and to find a series of Categories of clearness." †3
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177. [My definition of a sign is:] A Sign is a Cognizable that, on the one hand, is so determined (i.e., specialized, bestimmt,) by something other than itself, called its Object, (Ed.) The following occurs here in parentheses: "(or, in some cases, as if the Sign be the sentence 'Cain killed Abel,' in which Cain and Abel are equally Partial Objects, it may be more convenient to say that that which determines the Sign is the Complexus, or Totality, of Partial Objects. And in every case the Object is accurately the Universe of which the Special Object is member, or part)." †4 while, on the other hand, it so determines some actual or potential Mind, the determination whereof I term the Interpretant created by the Sign, that that Interpreting Mind is therein determined mediately by the Object. (Ed.) Cf. 2.228ff. for another discussion of signs. †5
178. This involves regarding the matter in an unfamiliar way. It may be asked, for example, how a lying or erroneous Sign is determined by its Object, or how if, as not infrequently happens, the Object is brought into existence by the Sign. To be puzzled by this is an indication of the word determine being taken in too narrow a sense. A person who says Napoleon was a lethargic creature has evidently his mind determined by Napoleon. For otherwise he could not attend to him at all. But here is a paradoxical circumstance. The person who interprets that sentence (or any other Sign whatsoever) must be determined by the Object of it through collateral observation quite independently of the action of the Sign. Otherwise he will not be determined to thought of that object. If he never heard of Napoleon before, the sentence will mean no more to him than that some person or thing to which the name "Napoleon" has been attached was a lethargic creature. For Napoleon cannot determine his mind unless the word in the sentence calls his attention to the right man and that can only be if, independently, [a] habit has been established in him by which that word calls up a variety of attributes of Napoleon the man. Much the same thing is true in regard to any sign. In the sentence instanced Napoleon is not the only Object. Another Partial Object is Lethargy; and the sentence cannot convey its meaning unless collateral experience has taught its Interpreter what Lethargy is, or what that is that 'lethargy' means in this sentence. The Object of a Sign may be something to be created by the sign. For the Object of "Napoleon" is the Universe of Existence so far as it is determined by the fact of Napoleon being a Member of it. The Object of the sentence "Hamlet was insane" is the Universe of Shakespeare's Creation so far as it is determined by Hamlet being a part of it. The Object of the Command "Ground arms!" is the immediately subsequent action of the soldiers so far as it is affected by the molition (Ed.) Cf. 8.303. †6 expressed in the command. It cannot be understood unless collateral observation shows the speaker's relation to the rank of soldiers. You may say, if you like, that the Object is in the Universe of things desired by the Commanding Captain at that moment. Or since the obedience is fully expected, it is in the Universe of his expectation. At any rate, it determines the Sign although it is to be created by the Sign by the circumstance that its Universe is relative to the momentary state of mind of the officer.
179. Now let us pass to the Interpretant. I am far from having fully explained what the Object of a Sign is; but I have reached the point where further explanation must suppose some understanding of what the Interpretant is. The Sign creates something in the Mind of the Interpreter, which something, in that it has been so created by the sign, has been, in a mediate and relative way, also created by the Object of the Sign, although the Object is essentially other than the Sign. And this creature of the sign is called the Interpretant. It is created by the Sign; but not by the Sign quâ member of whichever of the Universes it belongs to; but it has been created by the Sign in its capacity of bearing the determination by the Object. It is created in a Mind (how far this mind must be real we shall see). All that part of the understanding of the Sign which the Interpreting Mind has needed collateral observation for is outside the Interpretant. I do not mean by "collateral observation" acquaintance with the system of signs. What is so gathered is not COLLATERAL. It is on the contrary the prerequisite for getting any idea signified by the sign. But by collateral observation, I mean previous acquaintance with what the sign denotes. Thus if the Sign be the sentence "Hamlet was mad," to understand what this means one must know that men are sometimes in that strange state; one must have seen madmen or read about them; and it will be all the better if one specifically knows (and need not be driven to presume) what Shakespeare's notion of insanity was. All that is collateral observation and is no part of the Interpretant. But to put together the different subjects as the sign represents them as related — that is the main [i.e., force] of the Interpretant-forming. Take as an example of a Sign a genre painting. There is usually a lot in such a picture which can only be understood by virtue of acquaintance with customs. The style of the dresses for example, is no part of the significance, i.e. the deliverance, of the painting. It only tells what the subject of it is. Subject and Object are the same thing except for trifling distinctions . . . . But that which the writer aimed to point out to you, presuming you to have all the requisite collateral information, that is to say just the quality of the sympathetic element of the situation, generally a very familiar one — a something you probably never did so clearly realize before — that is the Interpretant of the Sign, — its "significance."
180. Now all this is, so far, very muddled for the lack of certain distinctions which I proceed to point out, though it will be hard to make them fully comprehended.
181. In the first place, it should be observed that so far as the Sign denotes the Object, it calls for no particular intelligence or Reason on the part of its Interpreter. To read the Sign at all, and distinguish one Sign from another, what is requisite is delicate perceptions and acquaintance with what the usual concomitants of such appearances are, and what the conventions of the system of signs are. To know the Object, what is requisite is previous experience of that Individual Object. The Object of every sign is an Individual, usually an Individual Collection of Individuals. Its Subjects, i.e., the Parts of the Sign that denote the Partial Objects, are either directions for finding the Objects or are Cyrioids, i.e., signs of single Objects . . . . Such for example are all abstract nouns, which are names of single characters, the personal pronouns, and the demonstrative and relative pronouns, etc. By directions for finding the Objects, for which I have as yet invented no other word than "Selectives," I mean such as "Any" (i.e., any you please), "Some" (i.e., one properly selected), etc. To know the Interpretant, which is what the sign itself expresses, may require the highest power of reasoning.
182. In the second place, to get more distinct notions of what the Object of a Sign in general is, and what the Interpretant in general is, it is needful to distinguish two senses of "Object" and three of "Interpretant." It would be better to carry the division further; but these two divisions are enough to occupy my remaining years . . . .
183. As to the Object, that may mean the Object as cognized in the Sign and therefore an Idea, or it may be the Object as it is regardless of any particular aspect of it, the Object in such relations as unlimited and final study would show it to be. The former I call the Immediate Object, the latter the Dynamical Object. For the latter is the Object that Dynamical Science (or what at this day would be called "Objective" science,) can investigate. Take for example, the sentence "the Sun is blue." Its Objects are "the Sun" and "blueness." If by "blueness" be meant the Immediate Object, which is the quality of the sensation, it can only be known by Feeling. But if it means that "Real," existential condition, which causes the emitted light to have short mean wave-length, Langley has already proved that the proposition is true. So the "Sun" may mean the occasion of sundry sensations, and so is Immediate Object, or it may mean our usual interpretation of such sensations in terms of place, of mass, etc., when it is the Dynamical Object. It is true of both Immediate and Dynamical Object that acquaintance cannot be given by a Picture or a Description, nor by any other sign which has the Sun for its Object. If a person points to it and says, See there! That is what we call the "Sun," the Sun is not the Object of that sign. It is the Sign of the sun, the word "sun" that his declaration is about; and that word we must become acquainted with by collateral experience. Suppose a teacher of French says to an English-speaking pupil, who asks "comment appelle-t-on ça?" pointing to the Sun, . . . "C'est le soleil," he begins to furnish that collateral experience by speaking in French of the Sun itself. Suppose, on the other hand, he says "Notre mot est 'soleil'" then instead of expressing himself in language and describing the word he offers a pure Icon of it. Now the Object of an Icon is entirely indefinite, equivalent to "something." He virtually says "our word is like this:" and makes the sound. He informs the pupil that the word, (meaning, of course, a certain habit) has an effect which he pictures acoustically. But a pure picture without a legend only says "something is like this:". True he attaches what amounts to a legend. But that only makes his sentence analogous to a portrait we will say of Leopardi with Leopardi written below it. It conveys its information to a person who knows who Leopardi was, and to anybody else it only says "something called Leopardi looked like this." The pupil is in the state of a person who was pretty sure there was a man Leopardi; for he is pretty sure there must be a word in French for the sun and thus is already acquainted with it, only he does not know how it sounds when spoken nor how it looks when written. I think by this time you must understand what I mean when I say that no sign can be understood — or at least that no proposition can be understood — unless the interpreter has "collateral acquaintance" with every Object of it. As for a mere substantive, it must be borne in mind that it is not an indispensable part of speech. The Semitic languages seem to be descendants of a language that had no "common nouns." Such a word is really nothing but a blank form of proposition and the Subject is the blank, and a blank can only mean "something" or something even more indefinite. So now I believe I can leave you to consider carefully whether my doctrine is correct or not.
184. As to the Interpretant, i.e., the "signification," or "interpretation" rather, of a sign, we must distinguish an Immediate and a Dynamical, as we must the Immediate and Dynamical Objects. But we must also note that there is certainly a third kind of Interpretant, which I call the Final Interpretant, because it is that which would finally be decided to be the true interpretation if consideration of the matter were carried so far that an ultimate opinion were reached. My friend Lady Welby has, she tells me, devoted her whole life to the study of significs, which is what I should describe as the study of the relation of signs to their interpretants; but it seems to me that she chiefly occupies herself with the study of words. She also reaches the conclusion that there are three senses in which words may be interpreted. She calls them Sense, Meaning, and Significance. Significance is the deepest and most lofty of these, and thus agrees with my Final Interpretant; and Significance seems to be an excellent name for it. Sense seems to be the logical analysis or definition, for which I should prefer to stick to the old term Acception or Acceptation. By Meaning she means the intention of the utterer.
185. But it appears to me that all symptoms of disease, signs of weather, etc., have no utterer. For I do not think we can properly say that God utters any sign when He is the Creator of all things. But when [Lady Welby] says, as she does, that this is connected with Volition, I at once note that the volitional element of Interpretation is the Dynamical Interpretant. In the Second Part of my Essay on Pragmatism, in The Popular Science Monthly of 1877 Nov. and 1878 Jan., I made three grades of clearness of Interpretation. (Ed.) See [Bibliography] G-1877-5a and 5b, 5.358-387 and 5.388-410, respectively. The three kinds of clearness are discussed in the second of these two articles. The two articles did not form a unit in the original series, but in later years Peirce considered republishing them as two parts of a single essay (cf. [Bibliography] G-1909-1). †7 The first was such familiarity as gave a person familiarity with a sign and readiness in using it or interpreting it. In his consciousness he seemed to himself to be quite at home with the Sign. In short, it is Interpretation in Feeling. The second was Logical Analysis = Lady Welby's Sense. The third,. . . Pragmatistic Analysis, would seem to be a Dynamical Analysis, but [is] identified with the Final Interpretant. (Ed.) Cf. 5.476, 5.491. †8
Chapter 11: C. A. Strong, Why the Mind has a Body (Ed.) Review of C.A. Strong's Why The Mind Has A Body (Macmillan, 1903, 355 pp.), Widener IV, dated c.1903 on the basis of the date of the book. †1
186. Today, the animating endeavour of the younger philosophers is to bring their queen within the circle of the genuine sciences, — those careful and prudent sciences whose occasional leaps and strides are rendered achievable by their habitual training in picking their steps, slowly and laboriously, so as to make sure of each foothold. It is this commendable spirit, and this alone, that justifies high hopes for the future of philosophy; and the past twelvemonth has brought no worthier pattern of it than Prof. Strong's 'Why the Mind has a Body' — a remark that, to our knowledge, has fallen from more than one or two pairs of weighty lips. A cool and painstaking attempt is here made to set forth the contemporary issues of the question of the nature of the connection between mind and matter, to subject the different contentions to brief but penetrating criticism, and to develope by original studies the panpsychism of Clifford and Paulsen. A plainly marked stadium is thus set up whence for some years all discussions of this subject must set out. Not that any real solution of the problem has been reached. Let us hope that such may some day appear; but at present, no peering into the future descries its features nor yields us any confidence out of what quarter of the horizon it shall first loom. Meantime, the information that a thorough student of philosophy, highly intelligent, and exceptionally impartial, understands such and such to be the present state of the discussion will be a great help to sober inquirers. Doubtless Prof. Strong himself anticipates that not a few additions and corrections will be found needed in this first draught of his analysis. He will want, for example, to supply some proof that interactionism, automatism, and parallelism are really conflicting doctrines and not mere ways of apprehending the same facts. He will also desire to take some notice of the pragmatist position to which so many minds are flocking. (Ed.) See [CP] V, Pragmatism and Pragmaticism. †2 He has, to be sure, a section entitled 'Thoroughgoing Phenomenalism,' — a phrase that ought, we should think, to denote pragmatism; but the author does not seem to see that thorough-going phenomenalism must be phenomenalism aufgehoben; that it must involve the opinion that the reader of this page directly perceives the very page itself some ten inches from his eye, and that another person, looking over his shoulder, will see the very same object, although under a different angle, and although each sees the real object, not in its entirety, but only as it is related to his own view-point, literal and tropical. Not only must the pragmatist entertain this opinion, but he must hold that no other can be held by anybody, except in a sense in which a self-contradictory opinion is possible. For all men acknowledge that the statement that the reader sees the real page answers all human purposes, prompts the suitable conduct on each occasion on which it gives any prompting. Now the pragmatist maintains that there is no other conception of reality to be by any means had than the conception of what must ultimately appear to answer human purposes, where 'human' means belonging to the communion of mankind. He holds that one who thinks he believes that anything is real for something more than human purposes, in reality merely believes that it is true for human purposes that something is real for more than human purpose, — which may perhaps be quite true in the only sense it can have, namely, that for human purposes so it is. Pragmatism makes or ought to make no pretension to throwing positive light on any problem. It is merely a logical maxim for laying the dust of pseudoproblems, and thus enabling us to discern what pertinent facts the phenomena may present. But this is a good half of the task of philosophy.
187. We must here content ourselves with a further remark or two which we trust may prove useful to a critical reader of the volume. Prof. Strong has much to say about the conservation of energy. The ordinary abstract statement of this doctrine is ill-adapted for philosophical discussion and is apt to be more or less misunderstood by metaphysicians. Better suited to their purposes is a recognized mathematical equivalent. Namely, the doctrine precisely amounts to this, that those motions of particles of which all physical events, considered as purely physical, are composed, undergo no "accelerations" (under which term are included all states of undergoing changes of motion) except such as are determined, according to fixed laws, exclusively by the relative positions of those particles at the very instants of those accelerations. The accelerations, which are the immediate effects, are absolutely simultaneous with the positions which are their causes. Yet Prof. Strong never fails to insist, in connection with the doctrine of energy, that causes precede their effects; — which is true of much causation, but is emphatically false of "conservative" forces. (Ed.) See [CP] VI, Chapter 3, "Causation and Force." †3 It is, indeed, a mathematical consequence of the doctrine of conservation that if the velocities of all the particles were at any instant precisely reversed, all those particles would move back over their former paths with precisely the same, though reversed, velocities as before. Thus, the laws of motion do not favor any one determinate direction in an entire course of change, rather than the reverse direction. The physical universe is full of changes regularly taking place in determinate directions; — so full that this might almost be said to be the predominant character of nature. But with such features of phenomena the doctrine of the conservation of energy has as much and as little to do as has the Monroe doctrine. When light strikes upon a glass prism, some of the rays usually emerge more highly colored than they entered the prism, which is an effect of chance. So when a man is exposed to natural agencies, some of these usually emerge from his organism highly marked with a purposive character. We know not exactly how this comes about; but one thing we may be sure of: the conservation of energy has nothing to do with it. Another point to be noted about physical causation is that acceleration, the effect, and relative position, the cause, are of disparate natures, not to be measured in terms of the same units. Yet Prof. Strong holds it to be an argument against the interaction of body and soul that their natures are disparate. Had he said that every effect is disparate to its cause he would have been nearer the mark. There is still another important suggestion to be derived from dynamics. In treating any ordinary problem in analytic mechanics, — say, for example, that of two pendulums swinging from one yielding support, — we begin by expressing the state of facts by means of that form of the law of energy enunciated above. (Ed.) See 6.272ff., 7.491. †4 This furnishes a differential equation which represents the interactions of the different parts of the system, (say the two pendulums). We now subject this equation to a mathematical transformation. It continues to express the same facts, or a portion of them; but from the new form of statement the conception of interaction has disappeared and each part of the system is represented as moving under a regularity of its own, independently of every other part. Each pendulum, to recur to our example, is now asserted to perform a regular harmonic motion consisting of two simple oscillations like one train of waves passing over another such train, while the other pendulum is ignored in the statement. This is a "parallelistic" form of stating the same facts that were at first stated "interactionistically." Hence we see that "interactionism" and "parallelism" may be merely two forms of expressing the same truth. Only the dynamist would hold that it is the original interactionist form that expresses the facts in their real relations to the general course of nature, while the parallelistic form is merely a partial expression [of the] facts which happens to be convenient for a particular purpose. However enigmatic the assertion may appear (and it is impossible here to defend it) it is certain that interactionism is in no logical conflict with the assumption that every transformation of motion is determined by physical conditions exclusively. (Ed.) Cf. 7.370, 8.274. †5
Chapter 12: John Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory (Ed.) Review of John Dewey's Studies in Logical Theory (The Decennial Publications, Second Series, Volume XI, University of Chicago Press, 1903, 378 pp.), The Nation 79(15 Sept 1904)219-220. †1
188. The volume of which Professor Dewey is the father forms a part of the University of Chicago's exhibit of an impressive decade's work, and is a worthy part of it, being the monument of what he has done in his own department. Here are eleven essays, four by himself, defining his conception of the business of the logician, seven by the students whom he has helped to form and set upon their own intellectual legs. It affords conclusive proof of the service he has rendered to these accomplished thinkers and, no doubt, to others; and they in their turn will render to another generation services of the same nature. Whatever there was to be gained by contact with a sincere student of philosophy, as such, they have manifestly gained. Are there any further services that logic could be expected to perform? Are any logical questions now being agitated in the different sciences? Is there any such question as to the constitution of matter, the value of mechanical hypotheses, now open in physics? Are there any methods as to more or less statistical methods of philological and historical criticism? If there are such questions, has past experience gone to show that there was any help to be had from broader sweeps of study than specialists can make? Is it worth while to examine at all into the questions here asked; and if it be, is it best to carry to them vague impressions, or the exactest conceptions that studies specially directed to them have been able to evoke?
189. There are specialists who are disposed to think any inquiries from the outside into their methods are impertinent. They say, with perfect justice, that they understand fully their own business, and wish to be let alone. Unquestionably, they must be right. There is, however, another class of specialists whose aims are of such a nature that they can sometimes make good use of ideas which have grown up in other studies. Such specialists, when they have created, say, physical chemistry, the new astronomy, physiological psychology, stylometry, etc., have sometimes gained a certain measure of esteem even from those of straiter sects. It has often happened that general studies of logic have resulted in such applications of one science to another. Analytical geometry was first conferred upon the human race as an illustrative example of the 'Discours de la Méthode.' The group of writers whom, abandoning all attempt at finding a descriptive designation, we may roughly call the English school of logicians, meaning, for example, Boole, De Morgan, Whewell, J.S. Mill, Jevons, Venn, Pearson, MacColl, etc., while pursuing studies often purely theoretical, are nevertheless taking a road which may be expected to lead to results of high value for the positive sciences. Those whom we may as roughly call the German school of logicians, meaning such writers as Christoph Sigwart, Wundt, Schuppe, Benno Erdmann, Julius Bergmann, Glogau, Husserl, etc., are engaged upon problems which must be acknowledged to underlie the others, but attack them in a manner which the exact logicians regard as entirely irrelevant, because they make truth, which is a matter of fact, to be a matter of a way of thinking or even of linguistic expression. The Chicago school or group are manifestly in radical opposition to the exact logicians, and are not making any studies which anybody in his senses can expect, directly or indirectly, in any considerable degree, to influence twentieth-century science.
190. Prof. Dewey regards himself as radically opposed to the German school, and explains how he is so. We must confess that had he not put so much emphasis upon it, we should hardly have deemed the point of difference so important; but we suppose he must know what his own affiliations are and are not. He seems to regard what he calls "logic" as a natural history of thought. (Ed.) See the correspondence to Dewey in the present volume, Book II. †2 If such a natural history can be worked out, it will undoubtedly form valuable knowledge; and with all our heart we wish the Chicago school godspeed in their enterprise of discovery. But their task will call for such extreme subtlety, precision, and definiteness of thought that we hope their new science will not disdain to take a lesson, if not from any of the older logicians of the country, nor from that American thinker who first essayed to use his great powers of observation to establish a natural history of mental products — we mean Dr. James Rush — at least from the well-established natural history of Nature, chemistry, botany, and zoology; the lesson, to wit, that a natural history can hope to begin a successful course of discovery only from the day when it abandons altogether the trivial language of practical life, and sets up a thoroughly new glossary of words exclusively its own, thereby not confusing our meagre philosophical vocabulary with the burden of added meanings to old words. If calling the new natural history by the name of "logic" (a suspicious beginning) is to be a way of prejudging the question of whether or not there be a logic which is more than a mere natural history, inasmuch as it would pronounce one proceeding of thought to be sound and valid and another to be otherwise, then we should regard this appropriation of that name to be itself fresh confirmation of our opinion of the urgent need of such a normative science at this day. (Ed.) Logic as a normative science is discussed in [CP] I, Book IV, "The Normative Sciences." †3
Chapter 13: On Pragmatism, from a Review of a Book on Cosmology (Ed.) Paragraphs 191-193 are from a draft of a review of Herbert Nichols's A Treatise on Cosmology, Vol. I, Introduction (The University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1904, 455 pp.), Widener IV, dated c.1904 from the date of the book. Paragraphs 194-195 are from Section 2, "What Pragmatism is," of a manuscript entitled, "Nichols' Cosmology and Pragmaticism," Widener IB1-2, dated c.1904 from the date of the book. In this manuscript, however, Peirce deals only slightly with Nichols's book. Section 2 is similar in many respects to the published article of the same title, [Bibliography] G-1905-1a (5.411-437).Cf. [Bibliography] G-1905-2. †1
191. No criticism of such a book, no characterization of it, not even as slight a one as that here to be attempted, can have any meaning until the standpoint of the critic's observations be recognized. Our standpoint will be pragmatism; (Ed.) See [CP] V, Pragmatism and Pragmaticism. †2 but this word has been so loosely used, that a partial explanation of its nature is needful, with some indications of the intricate process by which those who hold it become assured of its truth. If philosophy is ever to become a sound science, its students must submit themselves to that same ethics of terminology that students of chemistry and taxonomic biology observe; and when a word has been invented for the declared purpose of conveying a precisely defined meaning, they must give up their habit of using it for every other purpose that may happen to hit their fancy at the moment. The word pragmatism was invented to express a certain maxim of logic, which, as was shown at its first enouncement, involves a whole system of philosophy. The maxim is intended to furnish a method for the analysis of concepts. A concept is something having the mode of being of a general type which is, or may be made, the rational part of the purport of a word. A more precise or fuller definition cannot here be attempted. The method prescribed in the maxim is to trace out in the imagination the conceivable practical consequences, — that is, the consequences for deliberate, self-controlled conduct, — of the affirmation or denial of the concept; and the assertion of the maxim is that herein lies the whole of the purport of the word, the entire concept. The sedulous exclusion from this statement of all reference to sensation is specially to be remarked. Such a distinction as that between red and blue is held to form no part of the concept. This maxim is put forth neither as a handy tool to serve so far as it may be found serviceable, nor as a self-evident truth, but as a far-reaching theorem solidly grounded upon an elaborate study of the nature of signs. (Ed.) See 2.227ff. †3 Every thought, or cognitive representation, is of the nature of a sign. "Representation" and "sign" are synonyms. The whole purpose of a sign is that it shall be interpreted in another sign; and its whole purport lies in the special character which it imparts to that interpretation. When a sign determines an interpretation of itself in another sign, it produces an effect external to itself, a physical effect, though the sign producing the effect may itself be not an existent object but merely a type. It produces this effect, not in this or that metaphysical sense, but in an indisputable sense. As to this, it is to be remarked that actions beyond the reach of self-control are not subjects of blame. Thinking is a kind of action, and reasoning is a kind of deliberate action; and to call an argument illogical, or a proposition false, is a special kind of moral judgment, and as such is inapplicable to what we cannot help. This does not deny that what cannot be conceived today may be conceivable tomorrow. But just as long as we cannot help adopting a mode of thought, so long it must be thoroughly accepted as true. Any doubt of it is idle make-believe and irredeemable paper. Now we all do regard, and cannot help regarding, signs as affecting their interpretant signs. It is by a patient examination of the various modes (some of them quite disparate) of interpretations of signs, and of the connections between these (an exploration in which one ought, if possible, to provide himself with a guide, or, if that cannot be, to prepare his courage to see one conception that will have to be mastered peering over the head of another, and soon another peering over that, and so on, until he shall begin to think there is to be no end of it, or that life will not be long enough to complete the study) that the pragmatist has at length, to his great astonishment, emerged from the disheartening labyrinth with this simple maxim in his hand. In distrust of so surprising a result he has searched for some flaw in its method, and for some case in which it should break down, but after every deep-laid plot for disproving it that long-working ingenuity could devise has recoiled upon his own head, and all doubts he could start have been exhausted, he has been forced at last to acknowledge its truth. This maxim once accepted, — intelligently accepted, in the light of the evidence of its truth, — speedily sweeps all metaphysical rubbish out of one's house. Each abstraction is either pronounced to be gibberish or is provided with a plain, practical definition. The general leaning of the results is toward what the idealists call the naïve, toward common sense, toward anthropomorphism. Thus, for example, the real becomes that which is such as it is regardless of what you or I or any of our folks may think it to be. (Ed.) The notions of reality, externality, existence, law, etc., are discussed in many places; see especially [CP] I, V, and VI. †4 The external becomes that element which is such as it is regardless of what somebody thinks, feels, or does, whether about that external object or about anything else. Accordingly, the external is necessarily real, while the real may or may not be external; nor is anything absolutely external nor absolutely devoid of externality. Every assertory proposition refers to something external, and even a dream withstands us sufficiently for one description to be true of it and another not. The existent is that which reacts against other things. Consequently, the external world, (that is, the world that is comparatively external) does not consist of existent objects merely, nor merely of these and their reactions; but on the contrary, its most important reals have the mode of being of what the nominalist calls "mere" words, that is, general types and would-bes. The nominalist is right in saying that they are substantially of the nature of words; but his "mere" reveals a complete misunderstanding of what our everyday world consists of.
192. With this preface, let us examine a fair specimen of Dr. Nichols's power of analytic thought, which is the first requirement of a philosopher. This specimen shall consist of his definition of scientific law, or, as he prefers to term it, of "lawfulness." We all know that John Mill banished the word 'law' and substituted 'uniformity' for it, as more precisely expressing what is meant. But pragmatism discovers a serious error here. For while uniformity is a character which might be realized, in all its fulness, in a short series of past events, law, on the other hand, is essentially a character of an indefinite future; and while uniformity involves a regularity exact and exceptionless, law only requires an approach to uniformity in a decided majority of cases. This appears as follows: when the pragmatist puts to himself his stereotyped question, How could law ever reasonably affect human conduct, the answer that reflection brings him is that law could affect such conduct only through the knowledge of it creating and warranting anticipations of future experience. Now this sort of influence upon reasonable conduct requires no more than that those predictions should ordinarily be fulfilled; nor does it in the least preclude their being vague to almost any degree. But what the answer to the pragmatist's self-question does require is that the law should be a truth expressible as a conditional proposition whose antecedent and consequent express experiences in a future tense, and further, that, as long as the law retains the character of a law, there should be possible occasions in an indefinite future when events of the kind described in the antecedent may come to pass. Such, then, ought to be our conception of law, whether it has been so or not. But upon examining the usage of physicists, we find there are not a few truths called laws by the most careful terminologists which are not of an exact nature and which present downright exceptions. Such is Dulong and Petit's law, such is the periodic law of the chemical elements; and everybody can name others, galore. But in all the range of science there is no single proposition that goes by the name of a law, from which conditional predictions as to future experiences may not be deduced.
193. Dr. Nichols devotes a chapter of thirteen of his large pages to making out what "lawfulness" consists in, — full double what any pragmatist would require for the most convincing elucidation. But Dr. Nichols wastes part of his space on trifles, and occupies a good deal with old-fashioned declamatory rhetoric against "hypostatized entities." What was the use of this? Nobody will now-a-days dispute that the writers who are the target of all these philippics, those who used to talk so much about "causation" and "immediate causes" and the like, were at fault. Only, their real fault was of no other nature than precisely that of the eloquent declaimers against "entities" and "hypostatizing." Namely, in each case, it is not so much any positively erroneous doctrine, as it is that having before them ill-apprehended phenomena, instead of patiently sitting down to analyze the same, as they should have done, they content themselves with applying names of redoubtable sound but of little or no pragmatic purport.
— * —
194. A practical attitude of mind concerns itself primarily with the living future, and pays no regard to the dead past or even the present except so far as it may indicate what the future will be. Thus, the pragmaticist is obliged to hold that whatever means anything means that something will happen (provided certain conditions are fulfilled), and to hold that the future alone has primary reality. The fact that Napoleon did run his marvellous career consists in the fact that anybody who looks for them will find a thousand and one vestiges of that career. A questioner to whom pragmaticism comes as a novelty will naturally ask, "Do you mean to say that you do not believe there has been any past?" To which the pragmaticist will reply, — and note well his answer, because it is analogous to the answer he will give to a host of questions to which no further allusion will be made, — "Why, I believe in the reality of the past just as completely as you do, and just in the way that you do, except that either you or I perhaps do not describe correctly the intellectual side of [its] real meaning. To any memory [of] the past, there attaches a certain color, — a certain quality of feeling, — just as there does to the sight of a Jacqueminot rose. (Ed.) Cf. 5.458ff. †5 Ontological metaphysicians usually say that 'secondary sensations,' such as colors, are delusive and false; but not so the Pragmaticist. He insists that the rose really is red; for red is, by the meaning of the word, an appearance; and to say that a Jacqueminot rose really is red means, and can mean, nothing but that if such a rose is put before a normal eye, in the daylight, it will look red. Just so, the feeling qualities attaching to memories are entirely true and real, though obviously relative, as pastness itself obviously is relative."
195. "But what say you to the myriad details of Napoleon's life of which no vestige remains, — his having winked, let us suppose, one night when he was in absolute darkness. Did those events not occur?" So the questioner: to which the Pragmaticist will reply, "You speak of a wink as if it were a small event. How many trillions of corpuscles are involved in the action, through how many million times their diameters they move, and during how many billions of their revolutions in their orbits the action endures, I will not undertake to calculate. But certainly you cannot yourself think that so vast an operation will have had no physical effects, or that they will cease for ages yet to come. Certainly, when you talk of an actual event leaving at a subsequent time absolutely no consequences whatever, I confess that I can attach no meaning at all to your words, and I believe that for you yourself it is simply a formula into which by some form of logic you have transformed a proposition that had a real meaning while overlooking the circumstance that the transformation has left no real meaning in it, unless one calls it a meaning that you continue vaguely to associate the memory-feeling with this empty form of words. At any rate, you will remark that in all important respects you and I think alike about time, and that it is only in regard to metaphysical statements of no earthly consequence to anybody that we differ, — you allowing them to confuse and litter up your mind, while I sweep them out of doors." "But why look upon past and future so differently?" "The intellectual meaning of a statement is precisely the same whether it refers to past or future time. To say that a piece of porcelain is soft before it is baked is equivalent to saying that if anybody during that period tries to scratch it with a knife he will succeed, and to say this is again equivalent to saying that every experiment which is logically necessitated, if this be true, to turn out in a certain way, will turn out in that way; and this last statement has a corresponding equivalent, and so on endlessly. But of this endless series of equivalent propositions there is one which my situation in time makes to be the practical one for me, and that one becomes for me the primary meaning. As long as the porcelain is not yet baked, I mean by calling it soft that if anyone tries to scratch it with a knife he will readily succeed. But after it has been baked, and nobody has taken occasion to try that experiment, it is a different experiment among the endless series of equivalents that now expresses my primary meaning. The nature of the fact does not change; but my relation to it and consequent mode of conceiving do change, although I all the time recognize the equivalence of the different meanings." "Then you maintain, do you, that when you directly act upon a thing in making an experiment, this direct action consists entirely in the fact that subsequent experimental investigators will ultimately be led to the conclusion that you did act upon it?" "Ah, that I have not said, but have carefully guarded against such an interpretation by saying that it is only of conceptions, that is, of the intellectual part of meaning that I was speaking. The pragmaticist need not deny that such ideas as those of action, of actual happening, of individuality, of existence, etc., involve something like a reminiscence of an exertion of brute force which is decidedly anti-intellectual, which is an all-important ingredient of the practical, although the pragmat[ic]istic interpretation leaves it out of account. Yet while he may admit that this idea of brute thereness, — or whatever best names it, — is quite distinct from any concept, yet he is bound to maintain that this does not suffice to make an idea of practical reality."
Chapter 14: Wilhelm Wundt, Principles of Physiological Psychology (Ed.) Review of Wilhelm Wundt's Principles of Physiological Psychology, translated from the fifth German edition (1902) by Edward Bradford Titchener, Vol. I (Macmillan, 1904), The Nation 81(20 July 1905) 56-57, with an added quotation in 201n3 from a draft in Widener IV, dated c.1905 on the basis of the dates of the book and the published review. †1
196. When, in 1862, two years after Fechner's 'Psychophysik,' Wundt emerged from the physiological laboratory with his 'Beiträge zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmung,' students in this country there were who saw in the little volume the harbinger of a new science of experimental psychology; and the next year their hopes seemed to be crowned in the same author's 'Vorlesungen über die Menschen- und Thierseele,' concerning which, by the way, it had better be noted that, like other of Wundt's books, it has lost most of its original flavor in a second, reconsidered edition, and that the English translation represents this later edition. Without this explanation, the sensation it first caused would be incomprehensible. Its readers heard in it the promise that the new science should keep pace with the other strictly experimental sciences, and should quickly outstrip all those sciences (more numerous then than now) in which experimentation had not become practicable. Alas, today we are forty years wiser, and a chilling shade settles on hearts of enthusiasts of the sixties who now compare the advance that psychology has achieved — indisputable, but how modest! — with the unheard-of leaps that every other science has performed, be it an experimental one or not. Since 1860 the foundations of pure mathematics have been reconstructed; exact logic has been developed; physics has gained an optico-electrical theory, and radically new conceptions of molecular forces have been established; organic chemistry has followed out the doctrine of the aromatic compounds, and has been enriched by the doctrine of the unsymmetrical carbon atom; in its inorganic division the classification of the elements has been laid bare, the group of helium-argon elements has been added, and Mme. Curie has pronounced her magical "Open, sesame!" Besides all that, a new and more scientific kind of chemistry has been opened up. Biology has been equally revolutionized; astronomy has its new astro-physics, and geognosy has kept pace with the other sciences. Even on the psychical wing, linguistics, ethnology, archaeology, the history of high antiquity, have all found and matured new methods. In short, there is not a science that has not left psychology lingering in the rear; and the burning question of to-day is, why this should be so? Who will diagnose the malady of psychology?
197. It has been remarked that, at present, there is nothing which for the psychical wing of science fulfils that function which the science of dynamics fulfils on the physical side. Everybody knows what that function is. Every attempt to explain any phenomenon physically consists in first proposing some hypothesis as to the existence of designated dynamical conditions from which, according to the principles of dynamics, phenomena such as have been observed would take place, and then going on to put the hypothesis to the test of making it the basis of predictions concerning untried experiments.
198. Now it is a circumstance most significant for the logic of science, that this science of dynamics, upon which all the physical sciences repose, when defined in the strict way in which its founders understood it, and not as embracing the law of the conservation of energy, neither is nor ever was one of the special sciences that aim at the discovery of novel phenomena, but merely consists in the analysis of truths which universal experience has compelled every man of us to acknowledge. Thus, the proof by Archimedes of the principle of the lever, upon which Lagrange substantially bases the whole statical branch of the science, consists in showing that that principle is virtually assumed in our ordinary conception of two bodies of equal weight. Such universal experiences may not be true to microscopical exactitude, but that they are true in the main is assumed by everybody who devises an experiment, and is therefore more certain than any result of a laboratory experiment.
199. The sort of science that is founded upon the common experience of all men was recognized by Jeremy Bentham under the name of cenoscopy, in opposition to idioscopy, which discovers new phenomena. But long before Bentham's day the situation was sufficiently understood to set up a movement in the more enlightened countries to supply the psychical sciences with an analogous analytical foundation. The innumerable grades in the distinctness of thought prevent us from assigning dates, but one may say that the idea is struggling to the light in Locke's 'Essay' of 1689, and that its development was the best fruit of the eighteenth century. It moved in Italy, in France, and especially in Scotland. The analytical economics of Adam Smith and of Ricardo were examples of it. The whole doctrine in its totality is properly termed the Philosophy of Common Sense, of which analytical mechanics and analytical economics are branches. That Pragmatism of which so much has been said of late years is only an endeavor to give the philosophy of common sense a more exact development, especially by emphasizing the point that there is no intellectual value in mere feeling per se, but that the whole function of thinking consists in the regulation of conduct. (Ed.) See "Pragmatism and Critical Common-Sensism," 5.497-501, and elsewhere in [CP] V. †2 All this it is most needful to comprehend in order to assign to Wundt his proper rating in the history of philosophy.
200. The 'Physiological Psychology' is Wundt's most imposing and monumental work, but no man of science will call it his chef-d'oeuvre. That rank can be accorded to one production alone, his 'Untersuchungen zur Mechanik der Nerven und Nervencentren,' of which the first part appeared in 1871; the second, which is less fundamental but perhaps not less important, having been delayed by accidental causes until 1876, after the first edition of the 'Physiological Psychology' had appeared. Four traits of the 'Mechanik der Nerven' command admiration. One of them is a natural gift; two are results of scientific training; and one is a moral virtue. The gift is an astonishing sagacity about nerve-physiology — a subterconscious susceptibility to the noeto-meteorological premonitions of a hailstorm of evidence that, when it bursts, will be cold, hard, and cutting enough.
201. Of the two scientific perfections the more striking is the mature prestudy of the methods that were or might have been pursued in the investigation. The other is the vigilant scrutiny of all details of the phenomena, especially of such as, being unlooked for, might easily have been overlooked. But the most admirable trait of all — that self-respecting quality of Wundt's which no foibles can obscure — is his genuine anxiety to correct the opinions which he at the time entertains, and to cast away his most brilliant theories the instant the dicta of experience seem to be against them — a quality in which he so contrasts with all the metaphysical charlatans and self-admirers and with every other quintessential extract of littleness. (Ed.) "Endeavoring to sum up the results of this elaborate investigation so far as they concern psychology in such imperfect fashion as they can be reduced to one simple sentence, we may say that Wundt finds that the function of our thinking-organ lies in its regulation of motor reactions. Now this is neither more nor less than the substance of pragmatism in the dress of physiology. The original definition of pragmatism put it into this form of maxim: 'Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you conceive the object of your conception to have. Then, your conception of those effects is THE WHOLE of your conception of the object.' What is that than to say that the sole function of thought is to regulate motor reactions?" From a fragmentary draft (see 196n1). †3 Wundt's great service to man, aside from that special research described in the 'Mechanik der Nerven,' has consisted in teaching the students of cenoscopy the beauty of those virtues upon which the students of idioscopy, especially those on the physical wing, have always insisted — virtues that will necessarily result from any well-considered desire to know the truth. That such service has been Wundt's undoubtedly remains true, notwithstanding some lapses.
202. But the work of which Professor Titchener is publishing his translation is not to be classed as a performance of idioscopy, and little given is idioscopy to expressing itself in big books. It is not work of heuretic science of any kind. It is a product of that useful industry of collecting, arranging, and digesting the deductions of mathematics, the analyses of cenoscopy, and the discoveries of idioscopy — a service of which the Germans have assumed the burden, and which, as being the "systematization of knowledge," they as well as the general public are too apt to mistake for the business of science. From the date of the publication of this work, Wundt has turned a corner in his career, and has pursued a course not determined by the intrinsic affinities of his previous work. His principal publications (aside from revisions and from papers in his periodical Philosophische Studien) have consisted in an extensive treatise on logic, another on ethics, and a 'System der Philosophie.' These are subjects to which the majority of their devotees have been led by a desire to settle their beliefs about God, freedom, and immortality. But students of science are a good deal given to thinking that high theory is more apt to lead men wrong than right about religion, while religion has never done theory more good than harm. The doubts which impelled the few men of science who have been led to any thorough study of philosophy have almost always been concerned with the limits of trustworthiness of scientific results. But Wundt has never entertained any such general doubts. He explicitly says that whatever is not based upon the results of the special sciences has no real basis at all. He makes no exception in favor of dynamics, on the truth of which all his own work reposes. But, for him, common sense is nothing but an imperfect kind of science; and it is remarkable that his physiology recognizes no very fundamental difference between the functions of the cerebral cortex and those of the organs at the base of the brain. To the question what could have been Wundt's motive in putting himself forward as a leader in philosophy, for which he had never displayed any genius, but rather the reverse, the answer to which the study of his writings must lead is that the results of experimental psychology, meagre though they be as compared with those of other sciences, so dazzled the imagination of Wundt as to make him think that that study alone must be set up as the queen of the sciences, and prompted him to try to prove that logic, ethics, and philosophy could be securely based on that special science.
203. Wundt's philosophical publications have not met the acclamations that he undoubtedly at first expected; nor can it be said that the two scientific merits above mentioned are here one whit better exemplified than in the general run of second-rate philosophical treatises of the time. They rather fall below that average. In the matter of the deliberate preselection of methods, for example, one will not often meet with anything weaker than Wundt's admission that it seems self-evident that metaphysics should not be made to depend on the results of special science, while defending himself by saying that, having come to philosophy from physical science by the route of experimental psychology, it is natural that he should be unable to pursue philosophical investigations by any other method than that which his own sequence of study suggested to him. ("Ship ahoy! — Where are you bound?" "For the port of Philosophy." "Then why, in Heaven's name, are you sailing on that course, Captain Wundt?" "Well, the truth is, this is the way the vessel was heading at the time it occurred to me to make that port.") Other equally gross departures from the two scientific ideals could easily be pointed out. Whether or not, if Wundt had possessed any analytical strength, it would have been possible for him to imagine that he could base such matters as dynamics, geometry, and arithmetic upon his physiological experiments, or whether in that case he could have failed to perceive the value of the pragmatist analysis in binding together nerve-physiology and psychology, must remain matters of opinion. But, unfortunately for his good fame, there exist departments of logic upon which he has touched that no more fall within the marches of opinion than does the principle of the lever or the doctrine of limits; and here he simply places himself where Hobbes placed himself by his attempts at reasoning on exact subjects; and those who, nevertheless, talk of Hobbes as a "great logician" will be free to entertain the same opinion of Wundt — and of Lord Timothy Dexter.
204. As for the 'Ethics' and the 'System of Philosophy,' we shall simply say that no person of discrimination would prove that quality by ranking them among works of the first order. We say no more, because such deviations from a great career are too unpleasant to contemplate. Of course, even in the 'Logic' there are brilliant chapters; it could not be otherwise, their author having achieved such things as he had, though in a distant field. As to the 'Physiological Psychology,' there will probably be no break in the unanimity that it is the most important monument of the new experimental psychology. Professor Titchener's translation has been eagerly awaited for long years. He explains the delay in his preface. It appears that he has made three complete translations of the work which have twice been superseded by revisions of the original. He is himself of opinion that his third is the least good of the three, but one does not see how that could possibly be. His unusual skill in making agreeable English of a faithful rendering from disagreeable German had already been proved — a psychological accomplishment which Oxford training, the experience of the psychological laboratory, and practice in this very thing have perfected. It is not comprised in the verbal expression. Unerring judgment has been exercised in the editing both of the present volume and of others. The author's slips, if not too numerous, have to be corrected, with or without mention, according to circumstances. Whether the lettering of diagrams shall continue to represent German words or not, whether or not bad figures shall be replaced by better ones, etc., are questions about which the least talent for judging wrong would have betrayed itself if it had lurked in the translator. The present volume, the first of three, includes only the first and perhaps the most interesting of the six divisions of the original work. It relates to the subject in which Wundt's opinions have the greatest weight; and it is a subject whose practical corollaries will be obvious to every reader — "the bodily substrate of the mental life."
Book 2: Correspondence
Chapter 1: To Signor Calderoni, On Pragmaticism (Ed.) From an unsigned letter with the salutation, "Dear Signor Calderoni," Widener VB2a. The internal bibliographical references indicate that the letter was written c.1905. Cf. 8.260. The intended recipient was probably Mario Calderoni, an Italian pragmatist. Cf. Giovanni Papini, Le démon m'a dit . . . , Payot, Paris, 1923, "Mario Calderoni," pp. 181-189; M. Calderoni and G. Vailati, Il Pragmatismo, Lanciano, 1920. †1
205. I have delayed thanking you, as I now very warmly do, for sending me the three numbers of Leonardo, (Ed.) An Italian philosophical journal to which Mario Calderoni contributed. †2 and for your too flattering references to my formulation. In the April number of the Monist (Ed.) [Bibliography] G-1905-1a. †3 I proposed that the word "pragmatism" should hereafter be used somewhat loosely to signify affiliation with Schiller, James, Dewey, Royce, and the rest of us, while the particular doctrine which I invented the word to denote, which is your first kind of pragmatism, should be called "pragmaticism." The extra syllable will indicate the narrower meaning.
206. Pragmaticism is not a system of philosophy. It is only a method of thinking; and your correspondent, Juliano il Sofista, (Ed.) Giuliano il Sofista was a frequent contributor to Leonardo. †4 is quite right in saying that it is not a new way of thinking. If it were so, that, to my mind, would be almost sufficient to condemn it. It is only the formulation of it which was new thirty years ago, unless your correspondent is prepared to cite the volume and page on which an equivalent formulation had already been given. From his tone, I infer that he is quite prepared to do this; and I shall thus congratulate myself on an unknown fellow-thinker. Of those who have used this way of thinking Berkeley is the clearest example, though Locke (especially in the fourth book of his Essay), Spinoza, and Kant may be claimed as adherents of it.
207. Although pragmaticism is not a philosophy, yet, as you rightly say, it best comports with the English philosophy, and more particularly with the Scotch doctrine of common sense.
208. In an article which should have appeared in the July Monist. (Ed.) [Bibliography] G-1905-1b. †5 but which seems to have been crowded out by matters of superior importance, magic squares and the like, I specify six errors which I find in the Scotch doctrine of common sense, of which the most important is that those philosophers failed to remark the extreme vagueness of our indubitable beliefs. For example, everybody's actions show that it is impossible to doubt that there is an element of order in the world; but the moment we attempt to define that orderliness we find room for doubt. There is, besides, another respect in which pragmaticism is at issue not only with English philosophy more particularly, but with all modern philosophy more or less, even with Hegel; and that is that it involves a complete rupture with nominalism. Even Duns Scotus is too nominalistic when he says that universals are contracted to the mode of individuality in singulars, meaning, as he does, by singulars, ordinary existing things. The pragmaticist cannot admit that. I myself went too far in the direction of nominalism when I said that it was a mere question of the convenience of speech whether we say that a diamond is hard when it is not pressed upon, or whether we say that it is soft until it is pressed upon. (Ed.) At 5.403. †6 I now say that experiment will prove that the diamond is hard, as a positive fact. That is, it is a real fact that it would resist pressure, which amounts to extreme scholastic realism. I deny that pragmaticism as originally defined by me made the intellectual purport of symbols to consist in our conduct. On the contrary, I was most careful to say that it consists in our concept of what our conduct would be upon conceivable occasions. For I had long before declared that absolute individuals were entia rationis, and not realities. A concept determinate in all respects is as fictitious as a concept definite in all respects. I do not think we can ever have a logical right to infer, even as probable, the existence of anything entirely contrary in its nature to all that we can experience or imagine. But a nominalist must do this. For he must say that all future events are the total of all that will have happened and therefore that the future is not endless; and therefore, that there will be an event not followed by any event. This may be, inconceivable as it is; but the nominalist must say that it will be, else he will make the future to be endless, that is, to have a mode of being consisting in the truth of a general law. For every future event will have been completed, but the endless future will not have been completed. There are many other turns that may be given to this argument; and the conclusion of it is that it is only the general which we can understand. What we commonly designate by pointing at it or otherwise indicating it we assume to be singular. But so far as we can comprehend it, it will be found not to be so. We can only indicate the real universe; if we are asked to describe it, we can only say that it includes whatever there may be that really is. This is a universal, not a singular.
209. The truth of pragmaticism may be proved in various ways. I would conduct the argument somewhat as follows. In the first place, there are but three elementary kinds of reasoning. The first, which I call abduction (on the theory, the doubtful theory, I confess, that the meaning of the XXVth chapter of the second book of the Prior Analytics has been completely diverted from Aristotle's meaning by a single wrong word having been inserted by Apellicon where the original word was illegible) consists in examining a mass of facts and in allowing these facts to suggest a theory. In this way we gain new ideas; but there is no force in the reasoning. The second kind of reasoning is deduction, or necessary reasoning. It is applicable only to an ideal state of things, or to a state of things in so far as it may conform to an ideal. It merely gives a new aspect to the premisses. It consists in constructing an image or diagram in accordance with a general precept, in observing in that image certain relations of parts not explicitly laid down in the precept, and in convincing oneself that the same relations will always occur when that precept is followed out. For example, having convinced ourselves of the truth of the pons asinorum with the aid of a diagram drawn with a common lead pencil, we are quite sure it would be the same with a diagram drawn in red; and a form of syllogism which is certain in black is equally so in red. A phenomenon having been observed in a laboratory, though we may not know on what conditions it depends, yet we are quite sure that it would make no difference whether the number of degrees of the longitude of the planet Eros just one week previous were a prime or composite number. The third way of reasoning is induction, or experimental research. Its procedure is this. Abduction having suggested a theory, we employ deduction to deduce from that ideal theory a promiscuous variety of consequences to the effect that if we perform certain acts, we shall find ourselves confronted with certain experiences. We then proceed to try these experiments, and if the predictions of the theory are verified, we have a proportionate confidence that the experiments that remain to be tried will confirm the theory. I say that these three are the only elementary modes of reasoning there are. I am convinced of it both a priori and a posteriori. The a priori reasoning is contained in my paper in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for April 9, 1867. (Ed.) [Bibliography] G-1867-1b. †7 I will not repeat it. But I will mention that it turns in part upon the fact that induction is, as Aristotle says, the inference of the truth of the major premiss of a syllogism of which the minor premiss is made to be true and the conclusion is found to be true, while abduction is the inference of the truth of the minor premiss of a syllogism of which the major premiss is selected as known already to be true while the conclusion is found to be true. Abduction furnishes all our ideas concerning real things, beyond what are given in perception, but is mere conjecture, without probative force. Deduction is certain but relates only to ideal objects. Induction gives us the only approach to certainty concerning the real that we can have. In forty years diligent study of arguments, I have never found one which did not consist of those elements. The successes of modern science ought to convince us that induction is the only capable imperator of truth-seeking. Now pragmaticism is simply the doctrine that the inductive method is the only essential to the ascertainment of the intellectual purport of any symbol.
210. This argument must be supplemented by examples of the wholesome effect of pragmatistic interpretations. Among the most signal of these is the explanation of probability. We begin by asking, what is the use of calculations of probabilities; and the answer is that the great business of insurance rests upon such calculations. The probability upon which this business proceeds consists in the practical certainty that for every ten thousand dollars paid in about a certain number of dollars will have to be paid out. In the rare, the very rare, case in which decidedly more must be paid out, there are not only reserves more than ample, but there is the knowledge that such large payments will cause a great increase in the amounts paid in. A probability, therefore, is the known ratio of frequency of a specific future event to a generic future event which includes it. That is what probability must mean in order to have any importance for business. What, then, does it mean to say that if a man sees a phenomenon occur on m successive days, the probability is m + 1/m + 2 that the same phenomenon will appear on the next following day? Does it mean that if we put a large number of universes in a bag, shake them up well, and draw out one at random this will be the average result? It plainly means nothing at all of any consequence.
211. But all this neither proves, nor tends to prove, the whole proposition. It goes to show that the practical consequences are much, but not that they are all the meaning of a concept. A new argument must supplement the above. All the more active functions of animals are adaptive characters calculated to insure the continuance of the stock. Can there be the slightest hesitation in saying, then, that the human intellect is implanted in man, either by a creator or by a quasi-intentional effect of the struggle for existence, virtually in order, and solely in order, to insure the continuance of mankind? But how can it have such effect except by regulating human conduct? Shall we not conclude then that the conduct of men is the sole purpose and sense of thinking, and that if it be asked why should the human stock be continued, the only answer is that that is among the inscrutable purposes of God or the virtual purposes of nature which for the present remain secrets to us?
212. So it would seem. But this conclusion is too vastly far-reaching to be admitted without further examination. Man seems to himself to have some glimmer of co-understanding with God, or with Nature. The fact that he has been able in some degree to predict how Nature will act, to formulate general "laws" to which future events conform, seems to furnish inductive proof that man really penetrates in some measure the ideas that govern creation. Now man cannot believe that creation has not some ideal purpose. If so, it is not mere action, but the development of an idea which is the purpose of thought; and so a doubt is cast upon the ultra pragmatic notion that action is the sole end and purpose of thought.
213. It was in the desperate endeavor to make a beginning of penetrating into that riddle that on May 14, 1867, after three years of almost insanely concentrated thought, hardly interrupted even by sleep, I produced my one contribution to philosophy in the "New List of Categories" in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. VII, pp. 287-298. (Ed.) [Bibliography] G-1867-1c. †8 Tell your friend Julian that this is, if possible, even less original than my maxim of pragmatism; and that I take pride in the entire absence of originality in all that I have ever sought to bring to the attention of logicians and metaphysicians. My three categories are nothing but Hegel's three grades of thinking. I know very well that there are other categories, those which Hegel calls by that name. But I never succeeded in satisfying myself with any list of them. We may classify objects according to their matter; as wooden things, iron things, silver things, ivory things, etc. But classification according to structure is generally more important. And it is the same with ideas. Much as I would like to see Hegel's list of categories reformed, I hold that a classification of the elements of thought and consciousness according to their formal structure is more important. I believe in inventing new philosophical words in order to avoid the ambiguities of the familiar words. I use the word phaneron to mean all that is present to the mind in any sense or in any way whatsoever, regardless of whether it be fact or figment. I examine the phaneron and I endeavor to sort out its elements according to the complexity of their structure. I thus reach my three categories. (Ed.) Peirce then begins a long discussion of the categories and signs (cf. [CP] I, II). †9
Chapter 2: To Paul Carus, On "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" (Ed.) From an incomplete draft of a letter, bearing no date, to "My Dear Doctor Carus," Widener VB2a, with added quotations below in the present footnote and in 225n10. The similarity of this letter to 2.661-668 (1910) and to the letter described below in this footnote (19 July 1910) indicates that it was probably written c.1910. This draft was written when Peirce was in ill health, and it is in very rough form. Considerable editing has been done on it. The Carus papers at the Open Court Publishing Company, LaSalle, Illinois, contain what appears to be a typed copy of the letter of which this is a draft. In a draft of a letter of July 19, 1910, to "My dear Doctor Carus," Widener VB2a, Peirce discusses the republication of [Bibliography] G-1877-5a and 5b, "The Fixation of Belief" and "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," as two parts of a single essay with the title, "Pragmatic Clearness of Thought." His main point is that "The error of the Essay lies in its Nominalism." He further states that 1873 "is the date of my formulating the opinion expressed in the two articles that are the two parts of that Essay on Pragmatistic Clearness . . ." Cf. [Bibliography] G-1909-1. †1
214. Ever since I was paid that money by you and Mrs. Carus, I have been engaged with all my energy, allowing only for such as I had to expend upon my wife's health and upon getting this house habitable and in salable condition, in trying to write an article or articles for you upon the second grade of clearness, i.e., that which results from analytic definition, and upon corrections to the errors and other faults of the articles of mine that appeared in The Popular Science Monthly in 1877 and 1878, (Ed.) [Bibliography] G-1877-5, "Illustrations of the Logic of Science," The Popular Science Monthly, 1877-1878. †2 to which I should be glad if you would add a reprint of the article of January, 1901, (Ed.) [Bibliography] G-1901-1, a review of Pearson's The Grammar of Science. †3 which requires no correction.
215. I have written a great deal but am satisfied with but the smaller part of it . . . Since I got your letter I have . . . gradually been forced to the conclusion that since you are very reasonably impatient, my best course is simply to write a preface in which I state in general terms how what I then say ought to be altered, and I will here . . . try to indicate the points I should make.
216. In regard to the first Essay consisting of the first two articles, (Ed.) "The Fixation of Belief" and "How to Make Our Ideas Clear." †4 the principal positive error is its nominalism, especially illustrated by what I said about Gray's stanza, "Full many a gem" etc., . . . (Ed.) 5.409. The stanza referred to is the fourteenth in "Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard," by Thomas Gray. †5 I must show that the will be's, the actually is's, and the have beens are not the sum of the reals. They only cover actuality. There are besides would be's and can be's that are real. The distinction is that the actual is subject both to the principles of contradiction and of excluded middle; and in one way so are the would be's and can be's. In that way a would be is but the negation of a can be and conversely. But in another way a would be is not subject to the principle of excluded middle; both would be X and would be not X may be false. And in this latter way a can be may be defined as that which is not subject to the principle of contradiction. On the contrary, if of anything it is only true that it can be X [then] it can be not X as well.
217. It certainly can be proved very clearly that the Universe does contain both would be's and can be's.
218. Then in regard to the second article, I ought to say that my three grades of clearness are not, as I seemed then to think, such that either the first or the second are superseded by the third, although we may say that they are acquired, mostly, in the order of those numbers. I ought to describe, if only in a paragraph, how to train oneself and one's children in the first grade of clearness, so that, for example, one will recognize a millimetre length when one meets with it, and so with colors. I have done a great deal of work in training myself to this kind of clearness. It would if put together amount to two or three years of industry; and I should recommend systematic exercises of the sort to everybody. (Ed.) Cf. [Bibliography] G-1898-1, Lecture 5, "Training in Reasoning." †6 Useful as that is, however, I don't hesitate to say that the second grade of clearness is far more important, and all my writings of late years illustrate that. Still, I continue to admit that the third grade is the most important of all and a good example of it is William James who is so phenomenally weak in the second grade, yet ever so high above most men in the third. But there is no reason why all three should not be symmetrically developed.
219. The bulk of these Popular Science articles, after the first two, are occupied with a criticism of the underlying principles of Laplace's Théorie Analytique des Probabilités and Mill's System of Logic — two writers of a high order which have had and still have a great and deplorable influence.
220. Before the third article, on probability, I should like to insert a short and easy account of my existential graphs (Ed.) Existential graphs are discussed in [CP] IV, Book II. †7 because when that system is well in hand, it becomes so much easier to show great faults of Laplace and Mill; and that shorter account I could now easily write.
221. It would also be well to show how all numbers involve essentially nothing but ideas of succession. Then I should like to point out how utterly Laplace fails to define what he means by probabilité, his account of it resting upon what he calls the également possible, which I maintain has none but the vaguest meaning. I ought on my side to define probability. (Ed.) Peirce's theory of probability is discussed mainly in [CP] II. †8 For that purpose, I should have to begin by distinguishing three ways —three quite different directions so to speak, as different as the X, Y, Z of a system of orthogonal co-ordinates — in which cognitions can fall short of absolute certainty, or rather of mathematical certainty, which is not absolute, because blunders may have been committed in reaching it. (Ed.) Cf. 7.108ff. †9
222. The names which I would propose for general adoption for the three different kinds of acceptability of propositions are plausibility, verisimilitude, probability . . . .
223. The last alone seems to be capable of a certain degree of exactitude or measurement. By plausibility, I mean the degree to which a theory ought to recommend itself to our belief independently of any kind of evidence other than our instinct urging us to regard it favorably. All the other races of animals certainly have such instincts; why refuse them to mankind? Have not all men some notions of right and wrong as well as purely theoretical instincts? For example, if any man finds that an object of no great size in his chamber behaves in any surprising manner, he wonders what makes it do so; and his instinct suggests that the cause, most plausibly, is also in his chamber or in the neighbourhood. It is true that the alchemists used to think it might be some configuration of the planets, but in my opinion this was due to a special derangement of natural instinct. Physicists certainly today continue largely to be influenced by such plausibilities in selecting which of several hypotheses they will first put to the test.
224. By verisimilitude I mean that kind of recommendation of a proposition which consists in evidence which is insufficient because there is not enough of it, but which will amount to proof if that evidence which is not yet examined continues to be of the same virtue as that already examined, or if the evidence not at hand and that never will be complete, should be like that which is at hand. All determinations of probability ultimately rest on such verisimilitudes. I mean that if we throw a die 216 times in order to ascertain whether the probability of its turning up a six at any one throw differs decidedly from 1/6 or not, our conclusion is an affair not of probability as Laplace would have it, by assuming that the antecedent probabilities of the different values of the probability are equal, but is a verisimilitude or as we say a "likelihood." That Laplace is wrong can be demonstrated, since his theory leads to contradictory results. But perhaps the easiest way to show it is wrong is to point out that there is no more reason for assuming that all the values of the probability are equally probable than for assuming that all the values of the odds are so; or that all the values of the logarithms of the odds are so, since this is our instinctive way of judging of probabilities, as is shown by our "balancing the probabilities."
225. Having thus defined plausibility and verisimilitude, I come to define probability. None of the books contain a definition of mathematical probability (which is what I mean by "probability" however measured) which will hold water. For the sake of simplicity, I will define it in a particular example. If, then, I say that the probability that if a certain die be thrown in the usual way it will turn up a number divisible by 3 (i.e., either 3 or 6) is 1/3, what do I mean? I mean, of course, to state that that die has a certain habit or disposition of behaviour in its present state of wear. (Ed.) "No sign can function as such except so far as it is interpreted in another sign (for example, in a "thought," whatever that may be). Consequently it is absolutely essential to a sign that it should affect another sign. In using this causal word, 'affect,' I do not refer to invariable accompaniment or sequence, merely, or necessarily. What I mean is that when there is a sign there will be an interpretation in another sign. The essence of the relation is in the conditional futurity; but it is not essential that there should be absolutely no exception. If, for example, in the 'long run' (that is, in an endless series of experiences taken in their experiential order) there WOULD BE as many cases of interpreted signs as of signs, I should say that this 'would be' constitutes a causal relation, even though there were, as there might be, an infinite number of exceptions. If the exceptions are, as they occur, as many or nearly as many as the cases of following the rule, the causality would be in my terminology 'very weak.' But if there is any WOULD BE at all, there is more or less causation; for that is all I mean by causation. I do not pretend that this is an accurate analysis of the ordinary conception, or a parlance to be recommended. It is simply what I mean in this connection. It leaves the whole question of what there may be of a metaphysical character quite open." From a sheet which is very probably part of an incomplete letter, dated July, 1904, Widener Vβ. Cf. 2.661ff. †10 It is a would be and does not consist in actualities or single events in any multitude finite or infinite. Nevertheless a habit does consist in what would happen under certain circumstances if it should remain unchanged throughout an endless series of actual occurrences. I must therefore define that habit of the die in question which we express by saying that there is a probability of 1/3 (or odds of 1 to 2) that if it be thrown it will turn up a number divisible by 3 by saying how it would behave if, while remaining with its shape, etc. just as they are now, it were to be thrown an endless succession of times. Now it is very true that it is quite impossible that it should be thrown an infinite succession of times. But this is no objection to my supposing it, since that impossibility is merely a physical, or if you please, a metaphysical one, and is not due to any logical impossibility to the occurrence in a finite time of an endless succession of events each occupying a finite time. For when Achilles overtook the tortoise he had to go through such an endless series (endless in the series, but not endless in time) and supposedly actually did so.
226. Very well, I will further suppose that tallies are kept during the throwings, one tally of the throws turning up 6 or 3, but the other tally of the throws turning up 1, 2, 4, 5, and further I will suppose that after each throw the number that the latter tally has reached shall be divided by the number that the former tally has reached. I will use the expression that this quotient changes its value at every new throw, instead of saying that a new quotient differs from the last. When the quotient changes from being greater than 2 [or] being less than 2 . . . to being either just 2 or on the opposite side of 2 to what it was before, as for example if it passes from being 21:10 to being 21:11 or from 21:11 to 22:11 or from 25:12 to 25:13, etc., I shall say it touches 2 (meaning strictly that it either comes to 2 or passes across 2). Then after the first throw it will be either 0 or ∞ and there it may remain for any number of throws. But after it has once moved away it never will return to either of these values, but after it has finally recovered from the effects of the first throws it will oscillate in a very irregular way, and soon it will "touch" (or pass over) some other values for the last time although nobody can know that it is to prove to have been for the last time; and then values still nearer to 2 will be touched or traversed for the last time. And in its endless series there will be no value that it would not touch or traverse for the last time excepting only the value 2. And this "would be" is what constitutes the habit which we state in saying that the odds against its turning up a number divisible by 3 are 2:1 or that the probability of its turning up a 6 or a 3 is 1/3 . . . .
227. In order to get this matter straightened out, I think it would be well to change the place of the sixth paper and place it directly after the third. (Ed.) Peirce is proposing to place "Deduction, Induction, and Hypothesis" between "The Doctrine of Chances" and "The Probability of Induction." †11 Then I would append a Correction in which I would state that the division of the elementary kinds of reasoning into three heads was made by me in my first lectures and was published in 1869 in Harris's Journal of Speculative Philosophy. (Ed.) [Bibliography] G-1868-2c. †12 I still consider that it had a sound basis. Only in almost everything I printed before the beginning of this century I more or less mixed up Hypothesis and Induction . . . .
228. The general body of logicians had also at all times come very near recognizing the trichotomy. They only failed to do so by having so narrow and formalistic a conception of inference ( as necessarily having formulated judgments for its premises) that they did not recognize Hypothesis (or, as I now term it, retroduction) (Ed.) Peirce often calls this "abduction." †13 as an inference . . . .
229. When one contemplates a surprising or otherwise perplexing state of things (often so perplexing that he cannot definitely state what the perplexing character is) he may formulate it into a judgment or many apparently connected judgments; he will often finally strike out a hypothesis, or problematical judgment, as a mere possibility, from which he either fully perceives or more or less suspects that the perplexing phenomenon would be a necessary or quite probable consequence.
230. That is a retroduction. Now three lines of reasoning are open to him. First, he may proceed by mathematical or syllogistic reasoning at once to demonstrate that consequence. That of course will be deduction.
231. Or, second, he may proceed still further to study the phenomenon in order to find other features that the hypothesis will explain (i.e. in the English sense of explain, to deduce the facts from the hypothesis as its necessary or probable consequences). That will be to continue reasoning retroductively, i.e., by hypothesis.
232. Or, what is usually the best way, he may turn to the consideration of the hypothesis, study it thoroughly and deduce miscellaneous observable consequences, and then return to the phenomena to find how nearly these consequences agree with the actual facts.
233. This is not essentially different from induction. Only it is most usually an induction from instances which are not discrete and numerable. I now call it Qualitative Induction. It is this which I used to confound with the second line of procedure, or at least not to distinguish it sharply.
234. A good account of Quantitative Induction is given in my paper in Studies in Logic, By Members of the Johns Hopkins University, (Ed.) [Bibliography] G-1883-7b. †14 and its two rules are there well developed. But what I there call hypothesis is so far from being that, that it is rather Quantitative than Qualitative Induction. At any rate, it is treated mostly as Quantitative. Hypothesis proper is in that paper only touched upon in the last section.
235. There is a third kind of Induction. In order to show this, it is requisite to define Induction.
236. Now the essential character of induction is that it infers a would-be from actual singulars. These singulars must, in general, be finite in multitude and then, as I show in my Johns Hopkins paper, the inductive conclusion can be (usually) but indefinite, and can never be certain . . . .
237. But in ordinary cases an induction would become both precise and certain, — though even then it would not be apodictic certainty, if the instances were of denumeral (or simply endless) multitude. Therefore, defining induction as the sort of inference which produces verisimilitude or likelihood (that is, which regards an endless series of actualities as conclusive evidence of a would-be since it is the best evidence possible when we are not behind the scenes), . . . any plausible proposition that is supported by instances in every respect is justifiable so long as one keeps on the alert for the first exception. Of course, such an induction has the very minimum of likelihood, yet it has some; and we very often find ourselves driven to accept it. The world has always turned on its axis so far as we know about once every 24 hours and therefore we presume (vaguely) that it always will continue to do so. In every case that has been sufficiently inquired into, every human being has been born of a woman not a maiden. So almost everybody feels sure it always will be found so. People are far more confident of it than they have any right to be. All former generations of men have died off. Therefore, people say, they always will. In one sense I suppose this is certain. But that they always would even if there were no accidents, seems to me as weak an inference as any that I would not positively condemn as utterly worthless. I call this kind of thing crude induction. I must confess that although my explanation of the validity of induction seems to me to be far superior to any other, I am not altogether satisfied with it, or rather with its results. Quantitative Induction depends upon the possibility of making a truly representative sample. That is to say, the examples composing it must be chosen as possessing the conditional character, which is easy enough, but also so that the choice of them shall not be influenced one way or the other, by whether or not they possess the consequent character. They must be such on the whole in that course of experience to which the induction is to be applied. That, to be sure, cannot but be the case, should the entire class sampled be alike in respect to the consequent character. But the further this ideal state of things is from being realized the more extremely difficult it becomes to get a truly representative sample, and the result, after every precaution has been taken, is that we cannot expect any great precision in inductive conclusions when the class is anywhere near being equally divided between individuals that do and that do not possess the consequent character. However, this is not owing to any falsity in my theory, but to the essential imperfection of induction itself when applied to these cases.
238. As for the validity of the hypothesis, the retroduction, there seems at first to be no room at all for the question of what supports it, since from an actual fact it only infers a may-be (may-be and may-be not). But there is a decided leaning to the affirmative side and the frequency with which that turns out to be an actual fact is to me quite the most surprising of all the wonders of the universe.
Chapter 3: To John Dewey, On the Nature of Logic (Ed.) Paragraphs 239-242 are a letter dated "1904 June 9"; paragraphs 243-244 are from an incomplete letter, bearing no date, but from the evidence given in 243n4 it was written c.1905. Both letters are in Widener VB2a, and both have the salutation, "My dear Prof. Dewey." †1
239. I mean, if I can manage it, to get some notice of the book of your logical school into the Nation. (Ed.) [Bibliography] N-1904-16, reprinted in Book I of the present volume. Dewey had written from the University of Chicago, saying that he was sending Peirce a copy of the book and expressing his general indebtedness to Peirce. The letter, dated 11 January 1904, is in Widener VB2a. †2 But the editor fights very shy of the subject as I write about it and it is necessary to dilute and decorate it so that the result has not much value for serious students. I will therefore write to express how your position appears as viewed from mine. I am struck with the literary tone of your men, a sort of maturity which bespeaks the advantage of studying under you and thoroughly applaud your efforts to set them on their own legs. All that is admirable and warms my heart. But I must say to you that your style of reasoning about reasoning has, to my mind, the usual fault that when men touch on this subject, they seem to think that no reasoning can be too loose, that indeed there is a merit in such slipshod arguments as they themselves would not dream of using in any other branch of science. You propose to substitute for the Normative Science which in my judgment is the greatest need of our age a "Natural History" of thought or of experience. Far be it from me to do anything to hinder a man's finding out whatever kind of truth he is on the way to finding out. But I do not think anything like a natural history can answer the terrible need that I see of checking the awful waste of thought, of time, of energy, going on, in consequence of men's not understanding the theory of inference. Though you use the expression "Natural History," yet of the two branches of Natural History, physiology and anatomy, which are as sharply sundered today as ever they were, you seem to be alluding only to the latter, since you speak of its being revolutionized by conceptions of evolution. Now the doctrine of evolution has not affected physiology either much or little, unless by lending a competing interest to anatomy (Ed.) A marginal note on the first page of this letter reads: "The idea that two such elements as Evolution and Function can in the same sense depend upon one another seems to me absurd." †3 and thus weakening physiology. It has certainly neither directly, nor indirectly, strengthened it. So, using the word anatomy without reference to its etymological suggestions, but simply as a designation of the sort of business that Comparative Anatomists are engaged in, you seem to conceive your occupation to be the studying out of the Anatomy of Thought. Thereupon, I remark that the "thought" of which you speak cannot be the "thought" of normative logic. For it is one of the characteristics of all normative science that it does not concern itself in the least with what actually takes place in the universe, barring always its assumption that what is before the mind always has those characteristics that are found there and which Phänomenologie is assumed to have made out. But as to particular and variable facts, no normative science has any concern with them, further than to remark that they form a constant constituent of the phenomenon. Now nothing like the study the Comparative Anatomists are occupied with can be made of mere possibilities. It absolutely requires a rich experimental field. If it were not so, one could have an anatomy of Higher Plane Curves; and upon a superficial examination it might seem as if that were possible. But more thorough study will show that such a thing would be entirely artificial. There is no anatomy of possibilities because one can say in advance how pure possibilities vary and diverge from one another. Namely, they do so in every possible way. What renders a Comparative Anatomy possible is that certain conceivable forms do not occur. Only a minute proportion of them occur. Thus we have a comparative anatomy of the chemical elements, because though Mendeléef's Table roughly describes what elements there are in part, yet each element has peculiarities which that table does not account for and besides there are no elements except Manganese in one column and the rare earths do not differ from one another in any such way as the table predicts and besides the table sets no limits to the atomic weights; but we find that elements of very high atomic weights are radioactive in every column of the table and beyond these we find no elements at all. Thus there is in the list of chemical elements just that experiential diversity and absence of most possible forms that renders the kind of study called anatomical possible. If then you have a "Natural History" (i.e. a comparative anatomy) of thought, — it is not the merely possible thought that Normative Science studies, but thought as it presents itself in an apparently inexplicable and irrational experience.
240. The effect of teaching that such a Natural History can take the place of a normative science of thought must be to render the rules of reasoning lax; and in fact I find you and your students greatly given over to what to me seems like a debauch of loose reasoning. Chicago hasn't the reputation of being a moral place; but I should think that the effect of living there upon a man like you would be to make you feel all the more the necessity for Dyadic distinctions, — Right and Wrong, Truth and Falsity. These are only to be kept up by self control. Now just as Moral Conduct is Self-controlled conduct so Logical Thought is Moral, or Self-controlled, thought. The Germans have always been in favor of giving thought the rein. What is taught in German Universities bespeaks only the fashion of the day. No doubt a slow evolutionary process will gradually bring them round to the truth. But that is the Wild Oats doctrine applied to thought. It involves unspeakable waste.
241. Although I am strongly in favor of your Pragmatistic views, I find the whole volume penetrated with this spirit of intellectual licentiousness, that does not see that anything is so very false. Of course you will understand that I should not write in such underscored terms to any man with whom I did not feel a very deep respect and sympathy. I am simply projecting upon the horizon, where distance gets magnified indefinitely, the direction of your standpoint as viewed from mine.
242. There are three sciences according to me to which Logic ought to appeal for principles, because they do not depend upon Logic. They are Mathematics, Phenomenology, and Ethics. There are several sciences to which logicians often make appeal by arguments which would be circular if they rose to the degree of correctness necessary to that kind of fallacy. They are Metaphysical Philosophy, Psychology, Linguistics (of which they barely know that of the Aryan Languages, — and not Gaelic which does not ordinarily give a sentence a subject nominative), History, etc.
— * —
243. Your letter about my April Monist article (Ed.) [Bibliography] G-1905-1a. Dewey had written from Columbia University, praising this article. The letter, dated 11 April 1905, is in Widener VB2a. The date of the article and the date of Dewey's letter establish the date of Peirce's letter as c.1905 (see 239n1). †4 gave me keen pleasure, — all the more so because I was somewhat surprised to learn you found so much good in what I said. For your Studies in Logical Theory certainly forbids all such researches as those which I have been absorbed in for the last eighteen years. That is what I liked least in those four papers. First, because it is contrary to a maxim I never infringe "Never permanently bar the road of any true inquiry," and my studies are so real that they compel me to say that certain highly esteemed and "genetical" methods are leading to false conclusions, certain others that are despised are most precious. Secondly, because your mode of arguing that every inquiry ought to be conducted genetically is a wretched method, considering the extreme importance of the conclusion. Thirdly, because some of your premisses are entirely contrary to the convictions which half a dozen years of careful historical studies and my personal experience force upon me. For according to my studies there are some sciences which can be and ought to be studied genetically, while others cannot be so studied without rendering them perfectly futile. Such, for example, is pure mathematics; such are dynamics and general physics; such is chemistry; such is physiology proper. Again, you take as premiss of a confirmatory argument that any non-genetic logic will reach no conclusions that have any meaning in their real applications. But all my studies are conducted in full view of actual scientific memoirs and other records of scientific inquiry, in which they lead to denials of conclusions to which bad logic has led their authors; and some of my non-genetical studies have led directly to discoveries in mathematics and others to instituting experimental researches about the reality, if not the solidity, of which there can be no question; and in short I should like to know what genetic logician ever came to have such close quarters with actual science as I have done.
244. If it were not for this uncalled for intolerance of your logical theory, I should have no serious objection to it; and there are parts of it that seem to me admirable and of great value. I regretted your making everything turn on Lotze, as if he were a Hume. He was in his day a very careful, serious inquirer. But he was never a thinker of great subtilty, and he is now so entirely left behind, that I thought you might have left his doctrine to be disposed of by Jones and men of that calibre; and that he was rather small game for you. Whenever I come across a dilemma, I look out for the fallacy, my experience having shown me there almost always was one. Your reasoning generally is that either Lotze or you must be right, now Lotze isn't, etc. But you in no case, or in one at most, convince me at all that these are the only alternatives. In short, I think you could have made a stronger argument if you had let Lotze alone. That would not have been genetic, perhaps! But if instead of this argumentation which I can but believe to be artificial, you had just narrated how as historic fact you arrived at your opinion, that would have been genetic, and I venture to think that it would have seemed to me a conclusive proof, not of precisely all your propositions but of your main contention; and the errors would easily have been separated as merely the exaggerations of over-precision. The fallacy of over-precision which consists not in taking an ell when one has a right to an inch, but in stretching a warrant for a percentage of a micro-micron to more than the sum of all macro-kilometres, may be called the Philosopher's Fallacy. The first maxim of my "Synechism" runs: "Let us not precide our conclusions beyond what our premisses definitely warrant." What you had a right to say was that for certain logical problems the entire development of cognition and along with it that of its object become pertinent, and therefore should be taken into account. What you do say is that no inquiry for which this development is not pertinent should be permitted.
Chapter 4: To William T. Harris, On Mind (Ed.) A letter to "Wm. T. Harris Esq.," dated "1868 Nov. 30," in the Hoose Library at the University of Southern California. Harris was the editor of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy. †1
245. I send to you today two proof-sheets. (Ed.) For one of the articles, probably the second, of the series on intuitive knowledge in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 1868-1869; [Bibliography] G-1868-2. †2 I should have sent the first one on some days ago but was ill when it came.
246. I suppose you saw that I struck out the paragraph referring to Hegelians. I intended no slur on them, or any appeal to the ignorant against them. What I meant was to protest respectfully but energetically to them against a certain tendency in their philosophy. In fact with all the disposition of this school to find every philosophical doctrine true for its time and stage of development, yet if their categories should happen not to be true it is plain that to classify men according to them may be one of the most unfair things in the world.
247. I have considered your remark that you do not see the drift of my making man entirely ignorant of his own states of mind. I suppose I have not written very clearly for one thing, — and that I have tried to correct in the proof. But the real difficulty is that the article is truncated. I had intended to wind up with a long discussion about the metaphysics — the ontology of the soul. I left this off on account of the length of the article. But now I find by your criticism that it is wanted, and I have endeavored to put it into the briefest and most meagre form and send it to you, in hopes you will be able to tack it on to the end of the article.
248. I do not say that we are ignorant of our states of mind. What I say is that the mind is virtual, not in a series of moments, not capable of existing except in a space of time — nothing so far as it is at any one moment. (Ed.) Cf. 5.289, 5.313. †3
Chapter 5: To William James (Ed.) From a series of letters from Peirce to James in the William James Collection in Houghton Library. The date of each letter is given in brackets at the beginning of the first paragraph. Peirce's salutation is "My dear William," with but one exception (the letter of November 10, 1900) when he uses "My dear Willie." No letter is printed in full. There is considerable overlap between the contents of this chapter and [Perry] II, but each contains Peirce-James correspondence not to be found in the other. †1
§1. Pragmatism
249. [March 13, 1897] Your letter and the dedication and the book gave me more delight than you would be apt to believe. (Ed.) James, The Will to Believe, 1897, was dedicated "To My Old Friend, CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE, to whose philosophic comradeship in old times and to whose writings in more recent years I owe more incitement and help than I can express or repay." †2 The note came day before yesterday. I got the book last night. I have read the first essay which is of great value, and I don't see that it is so very "elementary" as you say, unless you mean that it is very easy to read and comprehend, and it is a masterpiece in that respect.
250. That everything is to be tested by its practical results was the great text of my early papers; (Ed.) [Bibliography] G-1877-5. †3 so, as far as I get your general aim in so much of the book as I have looked at, I am quite with you in the main. In my later papers, (Ed.) Cf. [Bibliography] G-1891-1. †4 I have seen more thoroughly than I used to do that it is not mere action as brute exercise of strength that is the purpose of all, but say generalization, such action as tends toward regularization, and the actualization of the thought which without action remains unthought . . . .
251. As to "belief" and "making up one's mind," if they mean anything more than this, that we have a plan of procedure, and that according to that plan we will try a given description of behaviour, I am inclined to think they do more harm than good. "Faith," in the sense that one will adhere consistently to a given line of conduct, is highly necessary in affairs. (Ed.) Cf. 1.616ff. †5 But if it means you are not going to be alert for indications that the moment has come to change your tactics, I think it ruinous in practice. If an opportunity occurs to do business with a man, and the success of it depends on his integrity, then if I decide to go into the transaction, I must go on the hypothesis he is an honest man, and there is no sense at all in halting between two lines of conduct. But that won't prevent my collecting further evidence with haste and energy, because it may show me it is time to change my plan. That is the sort of "faith" that seems useful. The hypothesis to be taken up is not necessarily a probable one. The cuneiform inscriptions could never have been deciphered if very unlikely hypotheses had not been tried. You must have a consistent plan of procedure, and the hypothesis you try is the one which comes next in turn to be tried according to that plan. (Ed.) Cf. [CP] VII, Book II, "Scientific Method." †6 This justifies giving nominalism a fair trial before you go on to realism; because it is a simple theory which if it doesn't work will have afforded indications of what kind of realism ought to be tried first. I do not say probability ought not to be considered. It will be a prominent factor in a well considered plan of research. Probability is simply absurd and nonsensical in reference to a matter of "supreme interest," and any decision of such a question on probable grounds is illogical. But wherein does the illogicality lie? Simply in considering any interest as supreme. No man can be logical who reckons his personal well-being as a matter of overwhelming moment . . . .
252. I am much encouraged at your thinking well of "tychism." (Ed.) Cf. 6.102. †7 But tychism is only a part and corollary of the general principle of Synechism. That is what I have been studying these last fifteen years, and I become more and more encouraged and delighted with the way it seems to fit all the wards of your lock. It was a truly sweet thing, my dear William, to dedicate your book to me.
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253. [November 10, 1900] Now, however, I have a particular occasion to write. Baldwin, arrived at J in his dictionary, suddenly calls on me to do the rest of the logic, in the utmost haste, and various questions of terminology come up.
Who originated the term pragmatism, I or you? Where did it first appear in print? What do you understand by it? (Ed.) On a post card dated November 26, 1900, Widener VB2a, James replies: "You invented 'pragmatism' for which I gave you full credit in a lecture entitled 'Philosophical conceptions and practical results' of which I sent you 2 (unacknowledged) copies a couple of years ago." †8
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254. [November 25, 1902] You feel, as I do, that the importance of pragmatism is not confined to philosophy. The country is at this moment in imminent danger on which I need not expatiate. In philosophy those who think themselves pragmatists, like Mr. Schiller, miss the very point of it, that one simply can't form any conception that is other than pragmatistic.
255. But I seem to myself to be the sole depositary at present of the completely developed system, which all hangs together and cannot receive any proper presentation in fragments. My own view in 1877 was crude. Even when I gave my Cambridge lectures (Ed.) [Bibliography] G-1898-1. †9 I had not really got to the bottom of it or seen the unity of the whole thing. It was not until after that that I obtained the proof that logic must be founded on ethics, (Ed.) Cf. 1.573ff. †10 of which it is a higher development. Even then, I was for some time so stupid as not to see that ethics rests in the same manner on a foundation of esthetics, — by which, it is needless to say, I don't mean milk and water and sugar.
256. These three normative sciences correspond to my three categories, which in their psychological aspect, appear as Feeling, Reaction, Thought. (Ed.) See Chapter 4, "Consciousness," [CP] VII, Book III. †11 I have advanced my understanding of these categories much since Cambridge days; and can now put them in a much clearer light and more convincingly. The true nature of pragmatism cannot be understood without them. It does not, as I seem to have thought at first, take Reaction as the be-all, but it takes the end-all as the be-all, and the End is something that gives its sanction to action. It is of the third category. Only one must not take a nominalistic view of Thought as if it were something that a man had in his consciousness. Consciousness may mean any one of the three categories. But if it is to mean Thought it is more without us than within. It is we that are in it, rather than it in any of us. Of course I can't explain myself in a few words; but I think it would do the psychologists a great service to explain to them my conception of the nature of thought.
257. This then leads to synechism, (Ed.) Cf. 6.102ff. †12 which is the keystone of the arch.
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258. [March 7, 1904] (Ed.) The letter bears dates of March 1 and 7, 1904, but the passage quoted comes under the latter date. †13 I want to thank you for your kind reference to me in your piece about Schiller's Humanism. (Ed.) "Quite recently the word 'pragmatism,' first used thirty years ago by our American philosopher, C.S. Peirce, has become fashionable as the designation of a novel way of looking at the mind's relations to reality." From p. 175 of James's review of F.C.S. Schiller's Humanism, in The Nation 78(3 March 1904)175-176. (This is identified as James's by [Haskell].) †14 . . . The humanistic element of pragmatism is very true and important and impressive; but I do not think that the doctrine can be proved in that way. The present generation likes to skip proofs. I am tempted to write a little book of 150 pages about pragmatism, just outlining my views of the matter, and appending to it some of my old pieces with critical notes. (Ed.) Cf. [Bibliography] G-1909-1. †15 You and Schiller carry pragmatism too far for me. I don't want to exaggerate it but keep it within the bounds to which the evidences of it are limited. The most important consequence of it, by far, on which I have always insisted, as for example in my notice of Fraser's Berkeley in the North American Review of October, 1871, (Ed.) 8.7-38. †16 is that under that conception of reality we must abandon nominalism. That in my opinion is the great need of philosophy. Notwithstanding what Royce says, Hegel appears to me to be on the whole a nominalist with patches of realism rather than a real realist.
259. I also want to say that after all pragmatism solves no real problem. It only shows that supposed problems are not real problems. But when one comes to such questions as immortality, the nature of the connection of mind and matter (further than that mind acts on matter not like a cause but like a law) we are left completely in the dark. The effect of pragmatism here is simply to open our minds to receiving any evidence, not to furnish evidence.
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260. [July 23, 1905] (Ed.) Some of the paragraphing in this letter is the editor's. †17 To begin with I want to emphasize my particular gratitude for your papers, as well as for the copies of Leonardo and a paper from Prof. Vailati no doubt sent at your prompting. (Ed.) Cf. 8.205. †18 . . . I read the French paper (Ed.) "La Notion de Conscience," Archives de Psychologie 5(June 1905) 1-12. †19 first of this batch you have last sent. I found it entirely clear as well as beautifully written. When you write English (it is better to say the disagreeable thing) I can seldom at all satisfy myself that I know what you are driving at. Your writing would, I can see, be immensely forcible if one knew what you meant; but one (No. 1) doesn't. Now, for example, when you talk about doubting whether "consciousness" exists, you drive me at once to consulting a lot of books (in that particular case just 23 without counting the dictionaries of Baldwin, Eisler, etc.) to see what you could mean; and they left me as much in the dark as ever. (Ed.) See 270-305. †20 But now that you are tied down to the rules of French rhetoric, you are perfectly perspicuous; and I wish, and I am sure lots of others do, that you would consider yourself so tied down habitually. Because one sees that it only aids your force of style. Of course, you can smile at my undertaking to advise you about anything whatever. The fact that you can do so, if you like, emboldens me to say what I say.
261. I also agree to every word you say in this French article to the full, with one exception. That is that I am quite sure the doctrine is not at all so novel as you say. Of course it is all the better for not being novel. My recent delvings in the psychologies showed me that. Besides, it is nothing in the world but the well-known doctrine of immediate perception (followed out, of course, into other fields). This same thing, therefore, was held by our old friend Sir Wm. Hamilton, who had the same unfounded idea of its novelty. Not only Reid, but Kant, in his refutation of Berkeley, explicitly accepts it. As for the scholastics, no doubt so far as they were influenced by St. Augustine they were medium-ists, if I may coin the word for the purpose. But insofar as they followed Aristotle, I do not believe they were. I could easily mention several moderns who agree with you, and I have myself preached immediate perception as you know; — and you can't find a place where I distinguish the objective and subjective sides of things. I think I will mail you a paper of mine that was printed Jan., 1901, in the Popular Science Monthly (Ed.) 8.132ff. †21 where you will see this, — not developed in the beautiful way you do, but plainly enough stated, I think. I refer you particularly to p. 301 et seq. I will quote a few phrases, though of course it is the continuous text that talks: "He tells us that each of us is like the operator at a central telephone office. . . Not at all! . . . When we first wake up to the fact that we are thinking beings . . . we have to set out upon our intellectual travels from the home where we already find ourselves. Now this home is the parish of Percepts. It is not inside our skulls but out in the open. It is the external world that we directly observe . . . . The inkstand is a real thing. Of course, in being real and external, it does not in the least cease to be a purely psychical product, a generalized percept." (Ed.) From 8.144; Peirce's deletions. †22 If I had had the least idea that I was uttering anything newer than the doctrine of immediate perception, I should have argued the matter more closely. Of course, this doctrine of immediate perception is a corollary from the corollary of pragmaticism that the object perceived is the immediate object of the destined ultimate opinion, — not of course, identical as a psychological phenomenon, for there never will be a necessarily ultimate opinion as a psychological phenomenon, but identical logically and metaphysically. I am quite sure that lots of others have held the same view, some of them pragmatists and some not. (I hope the word "pragmatism" may be accepted, as I suggest, as the term expressive of these things, — perhaps we cannot be sure just what they are — in which the group of us are in agreement, as to the interpretation of thought.)
262. As for humanism, it appears to me to be an allied doctrine, in perfect harmony with pragmatism, but not relating exactly to the same question. Indeed, since Schiller identifies it with the old humanism, I prefer the word "anthropomorphism" as expressive of the scientific opinion. For the old humanism was not a scientific opinion but an aim; and whether in harmony with scientific aims or not, quite exterior to the scientific aim. To Schiller's anthropomorphism I subscribe in the main. And in particular if it implies theism, I am an anthropomorphist. But the God of my theism is not finite. That won't do at all. For to begin with, existence is reaction, and therefore no existent can be clear supreme. On the contrary, a finite being, without much doubt, and at any rate by presumption, is one of a genus; so that it would, to my mind, involve polytheism. In the next place, anthropomorphism for me implies above all that the true Ideal is a living power, which is a variation of the ontological proof due, I believe, to Moncure Conway's predecessor, William Johnson (not James) Fox. That is, the esthetic ideal, that which we all love and adore, the altogether admirable, has, as ideal, necessarily a mode of being to be called living. Because our ideas of the infinite are necessarily extremely vague and become contradictory the moment we attempt to make them precise. But still they are not utterly unmeaning, though they can only be interpreted in our religious adoration and the consequent effects upon conduct. This I think is good sound solid strong pragmatism. Now the Ideal is not a finite existent. Moreover, the human mind and the human heart have a filiation to God. That to me is the most comfortable doctrine. At least I find it most wonderfully so every day in contemplating all my misdeeds and shortcomings. Pluralism, on the other hand, does not satisfy either my head or my heart. I am as sure as I am of anything that the logical doctrines connected with it, — Achilles and the Tortoise etc., — are utterly false.
263. As for the "problem of evil," and the like, I see in them only blasphemous attempts to define the purposes of the Most High, — or rather that is what I think of such disturbances of religious consciousness generally; but that particular problem has received the most beautiful and satisfactory solution in Substance and Shadow. We had a tramp working for us for a few days not long ago. One day he started the problem of evil. In twenty words I put before him the Substance and Shadow solution. He saw it, at once, did my tramp; and after a few moments' reflexion he looked up and said to me, "Yes, I guess that is just it." There is, however, nothing more wholesome for us than to find problems that quite transcend our powers, and I must say, too, that it imparts a delicious sense of being cradled in the waters of the deep, — a feeling I always have at sea. It is, for example, entirely inscrutable to me why my three categories have been made so luminous to me without my being given the power to make them understood by those who alone are in a condition to see their meaning, — i.e. my fellow-pragmatists. It seems to me that you all must have a strange blind spot on your mental retina not to see what others see and what pragmatism ought to make so much plainer; . . .
§2. Categories
264. [June 8, 1903] It rather annoys me to be told that there is anything novel in my three categories; (Ed.) Cf. 7.524ff. and [CP] I, Book III, "Phenomenology." †23 for if they have not, however confusedly, been recognized by men since men began to think, that condemns them at once. To make them as distinct as it is in their nature to be is, however, no small task. I do not suppose they are so in my own mind; and evidently, it is not in their nature to be sharp as ordinary concepts. But I am going to try to make here a brief statement that, I think, will do something for them.
265. By the phenomenon I mean whatever is before our minds in any sense. The three categories are supposed to be the three kinds of elements that attentive perception can make out in the phenomenon.
266. The practical exigencies of life render Secondness the most prominent of the three. This is not a conception, nor is it a peculiar quality. It is an experience. It comes out most fully in the shock of reaction between ego and non-ego. It is there the double consciousness of effort and resistance. That is something which cannot properly be conceived. For to conceive it is to generalize it; and to generalize it is to miss altogether the hereness and nowness which is its essence. According to me, the idea of a reaction is not the idea of two plus forcefulness. On the contrary to think of two dots as two is to have a little experience of reaction and then to tell ourselves that that is to be taken only in a Pickwickian sense, as a mere reaction within the world of ideas, the experience of reaction itself at once leading us to think of a world of seconds or existences and a world of mere tame ideas; the one resistant, the other subject to our wills. We also find ourselves thinking of the things without us, as acting on one another, as really connected. Now it is your business as a psychologist to say how that comes about, not mine. I merely look at the phenomenon, and say that all idea of real relation, or connection, has in it that same element of irrational reaction. All the actual character of consciousness is merely the sense of the shock of the non-ego upon us. Just as a calm sea sleeps except where its rollers dash upon the land.
267. If we imagine that feeling retains its positive character but absolutely loses all relation, (and thereby all vividness, which is only the sense of shock), it no longer is exactly what we call feeling. It is a mere sense of quality. It is the sort of element that makes red to be such as it is, whatever anything else may be. I do not see how that can be described except as being such as it is, positively, of itself, while secondness is such as it is relatively to something else. Anything familiar gains a peculiar positive quality of feeling of its own; and that I think is the connection between Firstness and Hegel's first stage of thought. The second stage agrees better with Secondness.
268. The third stage is very close indeed to Thirdness, which is substantially Hegel's Begriff. Hegel, of course, blunders monstrously, as we shall all be seen to do; but to my mind the one fatal disease of his philosophy is that, seeing that the Begriff in a sense implies Secondness and Firstness, he failed to see that nevertheless they are elements of the phenomenon not to be aufgehoben, but as real and able to stand their ground as the Begriff itself. The third element of the phenomenon is that we perceive it to be intelligible, that is, to be subject to law, or capable of being represented by a general sign or Symbol. But I say the same element is in all signs. The essential thing is that it is capable of being represented. Whatever is capable of being represented is itself of a representative nature. The idea of representation involves infinity, since a representation is not really such unless it be interpreted in another representation. But infinity is nothing but a peculiar twist given to generality. (Ed.) Cf. 7.535. †24 There is not anything truly general that does not actually make irrational existences conform to itself. That is the very heart of the idea.
269. That is a very bald statement. An immense number of items might be added. But I endeavor so to draw it up that these ideas may appear less of the nature of will-o'-the-wisps to you, — as steady lights. The more you reflect upon them the steadier they will become; — at least, such is my experience.
§3. Consciousness
270. [June 12, 1902] There is a point of psychology which has been interesting me. I should like to know from you whether there is any book which can give me aid about it. My own notion, which I dare say is crude, is this: The question is what passes in consciousness, especially what emotional and irritational states of feeling, in the course of forming a new belief. The man has some belief at the outset. This belief is, as to its principal constituent, a habit of expectation. Some experience which this habit leads him to expect turns out differently; and the emotion of surprise suddenly appears. Under the influence of fatigue (is this right?) this emotion passes into an irritational feeling, which, for want of a better name, I may call curiosity. I should define it as a feeling causing a reaction which is directed toward the invention of some possible account, or possible information, that might take away the astonishing and fragmentary character of the experience by rounding it out. (Of course, we want later to get a real explanation; but at first it seems to me that we merely say, "What can it be?") When such possible explanation is suggested, the idea of it instantly sets up a second peculiar emotion of "Gad! I shouldn't wonder!" Fatigue (?) again transforms this into a second irritational feeling which might perhaps be called suspicion. I should define it as a feeling causing a reaction directed toward unearthing the fault by which the original belief that encountered the surprise became erroneous in the respect in which it is now suspected to be erroneous. When this weak point in the process is discovered, it at once and suddenly causes an emotion of "Bah!" Fatigue (?) transforms this into the irritational feeling called doubt, i.e. a feeling producing a reaction tending to the establishment of a new habit of expectation. This object attained, there is a new sudden emotion of "Eureka" passing on fatigue into a desire to find an occasion to try it.
271. I had got to that point, when the expressman came in bringing me the copy of your new book. (Ed.) The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902. †25 I have spent five minutes turning over the leaves. I can see what the general feature of your position is, sufficiently to say that I am heartily in accord with you.
272. I say to people, — imaginary interlocutors, for I have nobody to talk to, — you think that the proposition that truth and justice are the greatest powers in this world, is metaphorical. Well, I, for my part, hold it to be true. No doubt Truth has to have defenders to uphold it. But truth creates its defenders and gives them strength. The mode in which the idea of truth influences the world is essentially the same as that in which my desire to have the fire poked causes me to get up and poke it. There is efficient causation and there is final, or ideal, causation. If either of them is to be set down as a metaphor, it is rather the former. Pragmatism is correct doctrine only in so far as it is recognized that material action is the mere husk of ideas. The brute element exists and must not be explained away as Hegel seeks to do. But the end of thought is action only in so far as the end of action is another thought. Far better abandon the word thought and talk of representation and then define what kind of a representation it is that constitutes consciousness.
273. But I want to tell you that you should study the new ideas about multitude and continuity (I alone as yet understand continuity, and have published nothing since I mastered it). Ah, my logic will give a tremendous boost to spiritual views! I hope it will get finished, although personally it makes mighty little odds to me.
274. Consider the plane spiral curve whose equation in polar co-ordinates is (Ed.) In the manuscript "θ" is an exponent on the constant "C." Cf. 7.370. †26
((r2-4r+3)/r-2) = CΘ
That curve will start at r = 1 and coil outwards toward r = 2 making an endless series of revolutions before it reaches r = 2. Then it will keep right on and perform an endless series of revolutions before r becomes 2 + e, no matter how small a distance e may be. Finally, when r becomes 3 the curve will come to an abrupt stop. This shows that although it be true that Being immediately acts only on Being and Representation immediately acts only on Representation, still there may be two endless series, whereby Being and Representation act on one another without any tertium quid.
275. If atoms are vortices in an ether, which ether is composed of atoms themselves, vortices in another ether, and so on ad infinitum, as may possibly be the case (and we care only for possibilities, since we are only refuting a supposed necessity), then it is very likely that the sound waves of my voice should be converted into heat, and this heat into the ether's heat, and so on, and that the whole infinite series should be traversed in a fraction of a second, after which they will be in the form of thoughts in your mind and so you will come to understand the meaning of those sounds. My logic will open up a world for investigation and show how to set about it.
276. With your notions of spiritual influence, why don't you join the Church? Surely you won't allow metaphysical formulae, dead as the dust of the catacombs, to deprive you of your RIGHT to the influences of Church.
277. I have been studying Royce's book. (Ed.) The World and the Individual. Cf. 8.117ff. †27 The ideas are very beautiful. The logic is most execrable. I don't think it very good taste to stuff it so full of the name of God. The Absolute is strictly speaking only God, in a Pickwickian sense, that is, in a sense that has no effect.
278. Forgive the garrulity that comes of my eremitical life and God bless you!
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279. [September 28, 1904] Your article about consciousness (Ed.) "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?", The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods 1(1 Sept 1904)477-491. †28 comes to me very a propos as I am writing about consciousness and have been reading up about it as well as my library (!) permits. But your paper floors me at the very opening and I wish you would do me the favor (I suppose it to be a simple matter) of explaining what you mean by saying that consciousness is often regarded as an "entity." I do not think you capable of setting up a man of straw and have no doubt you can tell me just how any given writer regards consciousness as an "entity." But this word, in modern philosophy, has never conveyed to my mind any idea except that it is a sign the writer is setting up some man of straw whom he imagines to entertain opinions too absurd for definite statement. Now I do not think anybody has any such opinions.
Therefore much as I am concerned to read your article, it is barred to me until I can find out what it is that you are opposing.
280. It appears to me that many writers think, or have influential vestiges of having formerly thought, that we have before us at each moment something far more detailed and determinate than any picture, and also think that all we are in any sense aware of is somehow in that image.
281. For my part, (Ed.) Cf. Chapter 4, "Consciousness," [CP] VII, Book III. †29 I think first that feelings, — say red, — are present when they are present in a peculiar positive self-contained way; so that although contrast makes us attend to them, contrast in no way constitutes their peculiarities; and feelings are thus present to us wholly, — wholly within consciousness in such a way that one might if one chose very well limit the meaning of consciousness to the feeling of an instant, — though then it would be something that we only know by analysis.
282. In the next place there is a two-sided consciousness, in which we separate the element under control from the element we cannot help, — although in this mode of consciousness there is no inseparable reflection that this is done. We separate the past and the present. The past is the inner world, the present the outer world. Now, this joined with feeling (which it involves or requires) might be called consciousness and would be the world, were it not for the phenomena of error and ignorance, which force us to reflect that there were two worlds in that two-sided consciousness. This consciousness furnishes all our facts. It is this that makes them facts.
283. Then we have in our minds as the main body of its contents, what never can be in consciousness in either of these senses and never can be in existence or be distinctly supposed to exist. This is the whole world of triadic relations, thought. We are aware of it, and thus it might be included in consciousness.
284. Second, I think there are writers who limit consciousness to what we know of the past which they mistake for the present and who thus think it to be a question whether we are to say the external world alone is real and the internal world fiction or whether we shall say that the internal world is the real and the external world a fiction. While the true idealism, the pragmatistic idealism, is that reality consists in the future. By mellonization (Gr. {mellön} the being about to do, to be, or to suffer) I mean that operation of logic by which what is conceived as having been (which I call conceived as parelelythose) is conceived as repeated or extended indefinitely into what always will be (or what will some day be, that is, its absence will not always be, which equally involves mellonization, which does not assert anything but is merely a mode of conceiving). (Ed.) Cf. 8.330. †30 The conception of the real is derived by a mellonization of the constraint-side of double-sided consciousness. Therefore to say that it is the world of thought that is real is, when properly understood, to assert emphatically the reality of the public world of the indefinite future as against our past opinions of what it was to be.
285. This long and vaporous letter is all intended to ask the simple question what you mean when you say that some people regard consciousness as an entity. (Ed.) James replied in a letter dated September 30 [1904] (James Collection, Houghton Library) as follows: "I have to confess that I don't understand a word of your letter, . . . "As for what entity may mean in general I know not, except it be some imperceptible kind of being. In my article it meant a constituent principle of all experience, as contrasted with a certain function or relation between particular parts of experience. The distinction seems to me plain enough. "I will shortly send you a couple more articles which build out that one farther." †31
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286. [October 3, 1904] Now I will speak first of my meaning of which you "don't understand a word" and then of what you say.
287. It is very vexatious to be told at every turn that I am utterly incomprehensible, notwithstanding my careful study of language. When I say it is vexatious, I don't mean that I don't wish to be told so. On the contrary, I am aware that my modes of thought and of expression are peculiar and gauche, and that twenty years of a recluse life have made them more so, and am grateful to people who help me by correcting me. But when, as in the present case, I am able to show that the accusation is a mere auto-suggestion due to your having told yourself that everything that Peirce says is unintelligible, and really having commanded yourself not to understand, it gives me a certain glee to feel authorized to yield to my natural vexation. You will be gratified, with your truly kind nature, to have afforded me so much innocent pleasure. Questions being usually answered at cross-purposes, in asking you what you meant by saying you did not believe that consciousness was an entity, I set down, — I mean I "sot" down, — one of the commonplaces of psychology, not that I thought you could have lost sight of it, but that I thought it very likely you might think that I had done so. It was that "consciousness," — the word, — is used by different psychologists in three senses, and that connected therewith are three doctrines about the thing or things. Well, you "don't understand a word" of it. Listen, then, and see how the same things precisely, only less explicitly stated, will sound when scratched from other pens.
288. 1st. Consciousness means feeling.
"Whenever there is any kind of feeling, there consciousness exists . . . . It is needless to point out that, from the very nature of an infinite series, it cannot be a present modification of consciousness. We may, I think, confidently assert (Ed.) In the text quoted this word is "affirm." †32 that the object of thought is never a content of our finite consciousness." ([George F.] Stout, Analytic Psychology, I, [1896], pp. 1 and 45.)
"To feel an idea and to be conscious of that feeling are not two things; the feeling and the consciousness are but two names for the same thing." (James Mill, Analysis, New Ed., I, 225.) (Ed.) Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind by James Mill with notes illustrative and critical by Alexander Bain, Andrew Findlater, and George Grote, 2 vols., second edition, London, 1878. †33
"Perhaps as good a definition as can be given of consciousness would be: a knowledge of a feeling." (Lester F. Ward, The Psychic Factors of Civilization, [1893], p. 298.)
289. These people are all sensationalists. They analyze psychic phenomena into their smallest portions, just as a physicist does physical phenomena, — and just as the latter, if you ask him what composes the physical universe, will say "matter and motion," so these sensationalists find nothing present to the mind but feelings. If you say to the physicist "What! Nothing but matter and motion? Are there no signs?" he will reply, "Undoubtedly, but they are psychical phenomena." Just so if you say to a sensationalist "What! Nothing but feeling? Are there no signs?" he will say, "Undoubtedly, but they are cerebral connections, — purely physical phenomena."
290. 2nd. Consciousness is a dual affair (therefore not feeling which has no duality) and just how makes little odds. Some say because all is relative in consciousness: some say because of the distinction of subject and object that is always present.
"Consciousness is the widest word in our vocabulary. By common consent it embraces everything that 'mind' embraces. . . . We speak of the object-consciousness as our attitude in being cognisant of the extended universe; while our attitude under feeling and thought we call subject-consciousness or mind." (Bain, Note to Mill's Analysis, I, 226.) (Ed.) Note 74 by Alexander Bain in Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind by James Mill with notes illustrative and critical by Alexander Bain, Andrew Findlater, and George Grote, 2 vols., second edition, London, 1878. †34
"Consciousness without contrast is impossible." ([William DeWitt] Hyde, Practical Idealism, p. 18.)
Hamilton's hammering on the ego and non-ego, we'll take for granted.
"Are the sensationalists right in asserting that sensational and affective elements of consciousness are the only ones? The writer [of this book] is convinced that the introspective analysis of sensationalists is inexact . . . . What James calls the feelings of 'and' and of 'but' — that is, the consciousness of connection and of opposition," etc. (Mary W. Calkins, An Introduction to Psychology, [1901], pp. 130, 131.) (Ed.) The words in brackets appear in the quoted text, but were omitted without notice by Peirce. In the quoted text the last word of the second sentence is "inadequate" where Peirce has "inexact." The first words of the quotation appear on p. 129 of the work. †35
291. 3rd. More or less explicitly, some writers, namely the Thomists, the Hegelians, and other Intellectualists, together with some scientific thinkers not too much sophisticated by reading philosophy, recognize with me (until I shall have studied your views, which I don't believe will carry me entirely away from this anchorage) three modes of consciousness, that of feeling, that of EXPERIENCE (experience meaning precisely that which the history of my life has FORCED me to think; so that the idea of a struggle, of not mere twoness but active oppugnancy is in it), and thirdly the consciousness of the future (whether veridical or not is aside from the question) in expectation, which enters into all general ideas according to my variety of pragmatism. (Ed.) Cf. 7.539ff. †36
"In its widest sense, consciousness, as opposed to unconsciousness, denotes all modes of mental life. It comprises all cognitive, emotional, and appetitive states which are capable of being apprehended; it is, in fact, synonymous with the sum-total of our psychical existence. In its second sense, it signifies the mind's direct, intuitive, or immediate knowledge either of its own operations, or of something other than itself acting upon it . . . . In its third meaning the word is limited," etc. etc. ([Michael] Maher, Psychology, Empirical and Rational, 4th Ed., [1900], p. 26.)
"In truth the field of science is much more consciousness than an external world." (Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science, 1st Ed., [1892], p. 63; 2nd Ed., [1900], p. 52.)
"If one listens to any simple rhythm, such as the ticking of a watch, one can note how the succession of separate ticks is viewed by our consciousness in such a way that the successive beats do not stand as merely separate facts, but are always elements in the whole experienced rhythm to which they seem to belong, while the successive presentations of the rhythm form a sort of stream of events, each one of which gradually dies out of mind as the new event occurs. (Ed.) In the quoted text this word is "enters." †37 In consciousness there is no such thing as an indivisible present moment." ([Josiah] Royce, Outlines of Psychology, [1903], p. 83.)
292. I submit that this is all as clear as your New Hampshire air of October, and as familiar "comme votre poche," and that I said it plainly enough; only it had to be unintelligible because I said it.
293. Now as to what you say, of course it is perfectly clear (or seems to be) NOW. But see how far from clear it is in your article. You note that the sentence "I deny that the word stands for an entity" was put forward as an explanation; — as clearly explaining how your view differs from the usual one, so that it implies that most persons, or most students of philosophy are in the habit of saying "Consciousness is an entity." So you still say, since you say that you don't know what "entity" means, and presumably don't believe it means anything clearly; so that it must be the other fellows' statement. I take your word for it, as your reading is immense, that they do say so. Yet I declare I do not remember to have met the expression, and am very much surprised to learn that "entity" can be commonly used to mean "a constituent principle of all experience." My difficulty lay in this terrible word "entity," and I cannot help thinking that it was not a perspicuous way of expressing the opinion you combat . . . .
294. I shall probably have very different notions after having studied your articles from those I entertain now. Hitherto I have been with the other fellows as to all three kinds of consciousness. I don't believe much that we shouldn't hear the music of spheres if there were any. I have been inclined to think that there is a certain tinge or tone of feeling connected with living and being awake, though we cannot attend to it, for want of a background. That would answer your description of a "constituent principle of all experience," would it not? I ask to make sure of my understanding of the opinion. In the second place, experience, from the very essence of the word, consists of our belief about a universe, — "the truth," — over against our opinions and beliefs, which are thought of as fallible and ignorant. Consequently, I do not see how you can possibly deny that consciousness in the second sense is a "constituent principle of experience." In the third place we carry about a sort of a bass counterpoint melody of beliefs in all our living. Now as I understand pragmatism it is of the very essence of it that belief is expectation of the future in all cases. Consequently it seems to me that the third kind of consciousness is also a "constituent principle of all" our life, and a fortiori of all experience.
295. As I understand you, then, the proposition which you are arguing is a proposition in what I have called phenomenology, that is, just the analysis of what kind of constituents there are in our thoughts and lives, (whether these be valid or invalid being quite aside from the question). It is a branch of philosophy I am most deeply interested in and which I have worked upon almost as much as I have upon logic. (Ed.) Cf. [CP] I, Book III, "Phenomenology," and [CP] VII, Book III, "Philosophy of Mind." †38 It has nothing to do with psychology.
296. Your mind and mine are as little adapted to understanding one another as two minds could be, and therefore I always feel that I have more to learn from you than from anybody. At the same time, it gives great weight in my mind to our numerous agreements of opinion.
297. Perhaps the most important aspect of the series of papers of which the one you send me is the first, will prove to be that it shows so clearly that phenomenology is one science and psychology a very different one. I know that you are not inclined to see much value in distinguishing between one science and another. But my opinion is that it is absolutely necessary to any progress. The standards of certainty must be different in different sciences, the principles to which one science appeals altogether different from those of the other. From the point of view of logic and methodical development the distinctions are of the greatest concern. Phenomenology has no right to appeal to logic, except to deductive logic. On the contrary, logic must be founded on phenomenology. Psychology, you may say, observes the same facts as phenomenology does. No. It does not observe the same facts. It looks upon the same world; — the same world that the astronomer looks at. But what it observes in that world is different. Psychology of all sciences stands most in need of the discoveries of the logician, which he makes by the aid of the phenomenologist.
298. I am not sure that it will do to call this science phenomenology owing to Hegel's Phänomenologie being somewhat different. But I am not sure that Hegel ought not to have it named after his attempt.
299. At the top of p. 483 you speak of various worlds. But the number is not so great. F.E. Abbot, one of the strongest thinkers I ever encountered, first showed me that there were just three; the outer, the inner, and the logical world. The others are not distinct worlds.
300. On the same page, a little below, you mention as a difficulty people will have in understanding this doctrine, that they are so accustomed to think of percepts as the only realities. "To think of realities as similar to percepts," I should amend this. That is the chief reason why people do not understand me, or I them without a special effort. For I am thoroughly accustomed to think of percepts or rather of perceptual judgments as the data of all knowledge, and as such having a certain imperfect reality. They exist, — the percepts themselves do. But developed reality only belongs to signs of a certain description. Percepts are signs for psychology; but they are not so for phenomenology.
301. What you call "pure experience" is not experience at all and certainly ought to have a name. It is downright bad morals so to misuse words, for it prevents philosophy from becoming a science. One of the things I urge in my forthcoming Monist paper (Ed.) 5.413. †39 is that it is an indispensable requisite of science that it should have a recognized technical vocabulary composed of words so unattractive that loose thinkers are not tempted to use them, and a recognized and legitimated way of making up new words freely when a new conception is introduced, and that it is vital for science that he who introduces a new conception should be held to have a duty imposed upon him to invent a sufficiently disagreeable series of words to express it. I wish you would reflect seriously upon the moral aspect of terminology. My "phenomenon" for which I must invent a new word is very near your "pure experience" but not quite since I do not exclude time and also speak of only one "phenomenon."
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302. [December 17, 1909] (Ed.) Some of the paragraphing is the editor's. †40 I was and had been long working as hard as I could upon my "System of Logic, from the point of view of Semiotic," when Juliette was enabled to start up the repairs which may enable me to finish that book, by keeping us alive. Then Carus having written me already offering me $200 or $250 (I forget which) for the copyright of my 6 articles in the Popular Science Monthly (Ed.) [Bibliography] G-1877-5. †41 for 1877 and '78, I agreed for $250 to allow him to print one edition, with a revision that I would furnish together with an Article for the Monist on my method of performing logical analyses. Owing to a lot of interruptions, . . . I either forgot, or never comprehended that Carus particularly cared to have that Article a separate one, and I had been working on it as a chapter of my first essay, (Ed.) Cf. [Bibliography] G-1909-1. †42 consisting of the two articles with which I began in the Popular Science Monthly called, — "The Settlement of Opinion" and "How to make our Ideas clear." Of course Definition, which is the end of Logical Analysis, is the first step, (after general familiarity in use,) toward making Ideas clear. However, he has lately written, remonstrating on my delay, and in consequence I am going immediately to write that article, which I think will be a really helpful one to many people.
303. I mean to begin by drawing a distinction between what I call "Psychology Proper," meaning an account of how the mind functions, developes, and decays, together with the explanation of all this by motions and changes of the brain, or, in default of this kind of explanation, by generalizations of psychical phenomena, so as to account for all the workings of the soul in the sense of reducing them to combinations of a few typical workings, — in short a sort of physiology of the mind, on the one hand, — and what I call "Phaneroscopy" on the other, or a description of what is before the mind or in consciousness, as it appears, in the different kinds of consciousness, (Ed.) Cf. 7.539ff. †43 which I rank under . . . three headings . . . . First, "Qualisense," which means that element of Feeling which consists in consciousness of the Quality of the Feeling, but omitting the element of Vividness, which does not alter the Quality (thus a faint memory of a highly luminous, and chromatic vermillion does not appear less luminous or less high colored, for all its dimness) and omitting all other concomitants of present feeling that are absent from a correct recollection of the same Quality. Second Heading: what I call Molition, which is volition minus all desire and purpose, the mere consciousness of exertion of any kind. Third Heading: the recognition of Habit of any kind in consciousness.
304. Then as preliminary to an argument tending to show that there are conscious elements that do not come under one of these three heads, I shall go on to show reason for thinking, first, that these three kinds of consciousness are entirely unlike; second, that they are connected with the ideas of one, two, three which are the three elementary forms with which logical analysis has to deal. One being the form of a simple idea, two that of an ordinary relative idea, and three the only simple form of combination of a direct union of more than two ideas, but being incapable itself of reduction to a pair of pairs but involving the idea expressed by "and" which always unites a triad or higher collection. Qualisense is the sort of consciousness of any whole regardless of anything else, and therefore regardless of the parts of that whole. Molition is a double consciousness of exertion and resistance. Consciousness of habit is a consciousness at once of the substance of the habit, the special case of application, and the union of the two.
305. Now third, I argue that there seem to be no other modes of consciousness by taking up some of the most difficult and analyzing them, which will at the same time illustrate my method of analysis. I shall show that a Concept is a Sign and shall define a Sign and show its triadic form. I shall define the Modality of a Sign and show that in this respect every Object is either a Can-be, an Actual, or a Would-be. (Ed.) Cf. 8.216. †44 I shall show (as generally recognized,) that an Actual cannot be defined and that the Can-be's and Would-be's when accurately discriminated are only definable in different senses. There is no use of going through these headings, however, because they are unintelligible until they are defined at length. I don't pretend that my argument that there are only three kinds of consciousness does more than raise a presumption by the precision with which I succeed in defining a great variety of terms without calling in any fourth element. It will remain for those who question the conclusion to find a term I cannot define with this apparatus. After all this I shall undertake to show (still somewhat imperfectly) that concepts are capable of such phaneroscopic analysis, or in common parlance "logical analysis"; but there are only a few cases in which I pretend as yet to carry the analysis so far as to resolve the concept into its ultimate elements. After a few more such questions have been discussed, I show how to go to work to perform the analysis; and then I proceed to show that a definition constructed according to my method at once clears up various puzzles relating to the concept.
§4. Free Will
306. [March 18, 1897] I have been much struck with the Dilemma of Determinism. (Ed.) James had recently sent Peirce a copy of The Will to Believe, which contains this essay; cf. 249. †45 I do not mean that there was any new thought to me in it, because this matter has been the subject of a very serious analysis on my part, a work much more elaborate than anybody would suppose from anything I have printed. But I was surprised to see how far you had penetrated into the logical analysis so long ago as 1884.
307. Two points particularly struck me. One was your resolving the matter altogether into a question of plurality, which is another name for my "variety" of nature. About that I need say no more, because I have developed the idea in print.
308. The other was your remark that the question is, is possibility a mode of being. Good. Precisely so. As I remarked in the last Monist, (Ed.) 3.527. †46 my old definition of the possible as that which we do not know not to be true (in some state of information real or feigned) is an anacoluthon. The possible is a positive universe, and the two negations happen to fit it, but that is all. Of course, there is a general logical possible that is no more than I defined it. But there is also a possible which [is] something else. I reached this truth by studying the question of possible grades of multitude, where I found myself arrested until I could form a whole logic of possibility, — a very difficult and laborious task. You would not have reached it that way. You must have some short cut, which I am curious to know more about.
309. Very well. You have said the whole question of determinism is the question of ultimate plurality; and you have also said the same question is the question of positive possibility. But you have not said anything to show that you perceive how these two statements agree.
310. I have never read the Logique of Charles Renouvier. Do you possess a copy of it; and if so could you spare it long enough for me to read it?
311. There are some things in your Dilemma of Determinism that I cannot assent to. I cannot admit the will is free in any appreciable measure, for reasons that may be found in my Man's Glassy Essence. (Ed.) 6.238-271. †47 Namely, chance can only amount to much in a state of things closely approximating to unstable equilibrium. Now in the act of willing there is no such state of things. The freedom lies in the choice which long antecedes the will. There a state of nearly unstable equilibrium is found. But this makes a great difference in your doctrine.
312. As for the note about God being out of time, it seems to me probable that it was hastily penned. For it appears plain that (as has been often said, — by Kant for instance) if God is out of time the difficulty is removed. And in my opinion the scholastics were right in holding that, putting God into time, there is no contradiction between Foreknowledge and Free Will.
I forget what your father said about it, but I remember being much struck with it. Your father saw a long way in a certain direction.
§5. Signs
313. [January 22, 1905] (Ed.) This letter is unsigned and has some scratch work on the last page. †48 Now an assertion belongs to the class of phenomena like going before a notary and making an affidavit, executing a deed, signing a note, of which the essence is that one voluntarily puts oneself into a situation in which penalties will be incurred unless some proposition is true. One may maintain that every proposition involves an assertion. Very likely that may be true as a psychological truth; but if so the element of assertion is frequently altogether or in great degree inhibited and disavowed. I have nothing further to say about assertion. What I want to come to is the question what a proposition consists in, when the element of assertion is, as far as possible, removed from it. It is of course a kind of sign. . . . What kind of a sign is a proposition? A symptom is not a proposition although it justifies a proposition. The reason is that it lacks what is most essential to propositions and to various other kinds of signs, that of professing something, making a pretension, representing itself to be such and such. It professes to be a certain kind of sign, namely that kind that is a sign by virtue of being really connected with its object, which means that it has that kind of relation to its object which subsists in those two correlates regardless of all else. So, then, according to me, reality is a conception that every man has because it is involved in every proposition; and since every man makes assertions he deals with propositions. (Of course, I have not fully defined a proposition, because I have not discriminated the proposition from the individual sign which is the embodiment of the proposition. By a proposition, as something which can be repeated over and over again, translated into another language, embodied in a logical graph or algebraical formula, and still be one and the same proposition, we do not mean any existing individual object but a type, a general, which does not exist but governs existents, to which individuals conform.)
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314. [March 14, 1909] We must distinguish between the Immediate Object, — i.e. the Object as represented in the sign, — and the Real (no, because perhaps the Object is altogether fictive, I must choose a different term, therefore), say rather the Dynamical Object, which, from the nature of things, the Sign cannot express, which it can only indicate and leave the interpreter to find out by collateral experience. For instance, I point my finger to what I mean, but I can't make my companion know what I mean, if he can't see it, or if seeing it, it does not, to his mind, separate itself from the surrounding objects in the field of vision. It is useless to attempt to discuss the genuineness and possession of a personality beneath the histrionic presentation of Theodore Roosevelt with a person who recently has come from Mars and never heard of Theodore before. A similar distinction must be made as to the Interpretant. But in respect to that Interpretant, the dichotomy is not enough by any means. For instance, suppose I awake in the morning before my wife, and that afterwards she wakes up and inquires, "What sort of a day is it?" This is a sign, whose Object, as expressed, is the weather at that time, but whose Dynamical Object is the impression which I have presumably derived from peeping between the window-curtains. Whose Interpretant, as expressed, is the quality of the weather, but whose Dynamical Interpretant, is my answering her question. But beyond that, there is a third Interpretant. The Immediate Interpretant is what the Question expresses, all that it immediately expresses, which I have imperfectly restated above. The Dynamical Interpretant is the actual effect that it has upon me, its interpreter. But the Significance of it, the Ultimate, or Final, Interpretant is her purpose in asking it, what effect its answer will have as to her plans for the ensuing day. I reply, let us suppose: "It is a stormy day." Here is another sign. Its Immediate Object is the notion of the present weather so far as this is common to her mind and mine — not the character of it, but the identity of it. The Dynamical Object is the identity of the actual or Real meteorological conditions at the moment. The Immediate Interpretant is the schema in her imagination, i.e. the vague Image or what there is in common to the different Images of a stormy day. The Dynamical Interpretant is the disappointment or whatever actual effect it at once has upon her. The Final Interpretant is the sum of the Lessons of the reply, Moral, Scientific, etc. Now it is easy to see that my attempt to draw this three-way, "trivialis" distinction, relates to a real and important three-way distinction, and yet that it is quite hazy and needs a vast deal of study before it is rendered perfect. Lady Welby has got hold of the same real distinction in her "Sense, Meaning, Significance," but conceives it as imperfectly as I do, but imperfectly in other ways. Her Sense is the Impression made or normally to be made. Her meaning is what is intended, its purpose. Her Significance is the real upshot. (Ed.) Cf. 8.171ff. and 8.342ff. †49
315. [April 1, 1909] . . . let me give a little fuller explanation of my distinction between the Immediate, the Dynamical, and the Final Interpretants. . . The Dynamical Interpretant is whatever interpretation any mind actually makes of a sign. This Interpretant derives its character from the Dyadic category, the category of Action. This has two aspects, the Active and the Passive, which are not merely opposite aspects but make relative contrasts between different influences of this Category as More Active and More Passive. In psychology this category marks Molition (Ed.) Cf. 303. †50 in its active aspect of a force and its passive aspect as a resistance. When an imagination, a day-dream fires a young man's ambition or any other active passion, that is a more Active variety of his Dynamical Interpretation of the dream. When a novelty excites his surprise, — and the scepticism that goes along with surprise, — this is a more Passive variety of Dynamical Interpretant. I am not speaking of the feelings of passion or of surprise as qualities. For those qualities are no part of the dynamic Interpretant. But the agitations of passion and of surprise are the actual dynamic Interpretants. So surprise again has its Active and its Passive variety; — the former when what one perceives positively conflicts with expectation, the latter when having no positive expectation but only the absence of any suspicion of anything out of the common something quite unexpected occurs, — such as a total eclipse of the sun which one had not anticipated. Any surprise involves a resistance to accepting the fact. One rubs one's eyes, as Shaler used to do, determined not to admit the observation until it is plain one will be compelled to do so. Thus every actual interpretation is dyadic . . . . [As] pragmaticism says . . . (one part of pragmaticism, for Pragmaticism is not exclusively an opinion about the Dynamic Interpretant), . . . it says, for one thing, that the meaning of any sign for anybody consists in the way he reacts to the sign. When the captain of infantry gives the word "Ground arms!" the dynamic Interpretant is in the thump of the muskets on the ground, or rather it is the Act of their Minds. In its forms, the Dynamical Interpretant indefinitely approaches the character of the Interpretant; and yet the distinction is absolute. The Final Interpretant does not consist in the way in which any mind does act but in the way in which every mind would act. That is, it consists in a truth which might be expressed in a conditional proposition of this type: "If so and so were to happen to any mind this sign would determine that mind to such and such conduct." By "conduct" I mean action under an intention of self-control. No event that occurs to any mind, no action of any mind can constitute the truth of that conditional proposition. The Immediate Interpretant consists in the Quality of the Impression that a sign is fit to produce, not to any actual reaction. Thus the Immediate and Final Interpretants seem to me absolutely distinct from the Dynamical Interpretant and from each other. And if there be any fourth kind of Interpretant on the same footing as those three, there must be a dreadful rupture of my mental retina, for I can't see it at all.
Chapter 6: To Christine Ladd-Franklin, On Cosmology (Ed.) From an incomplete letter to "My dear Mrs. Franklin," dated "1891 Aug 29," Widener VB2a. †1
316. My work in philosophy has consisted in an accurate analysis of concepts, showing what is and what is not essential to the subject of analysis. Particularly, in logic, my motive for studying the algebra of the subject, has been the desire to find out with accuracy what are the essential ingredients of reasoning in general and of its principal kinds. To make a powerful calculus has not been my care.
317. I may mention that my chief avocation in the last ten years has been to develop my cosmology. (Ed.) See The Monist series of 1891-1893, [Bibliography] G-1891-1. †2 This theory is that the evolution of the world is hyperbolic, that is, proceeds from one state of things in the infinite past, to a different state of things in the infinite future. The state of things in the infinite past is chaos, tohu bohu, the nothingness of which consists in the total absence of regularity. The state of things in the infinite future is death, the nothingness of which consists in the complete triumph of law and absence of all spontaneity. (Ed.) Cf. 6.33. †3 Between these, we have on our side a state of things in which there is some absolute spontaneity counter to all law, and some degree of conformity to law, which is constantly on the increase owing to the growth of habit. The tendency to form habits or tendency to generalize, is something which grows by its own action, by the habit of taking habits itself growing. Its first germs arose from pure chance. There were slight tendencies to obey rules that had been followed, and these tendencies were rules which were more and more obeyed by their own action. There were also slight tendencies to do otherwise than previously, and these destroyed themselves. To be sure, they would sometimes be strengthened by the opposite tendency, but the stronger they became the more they would tend to destroy themselves. As to the part of time on the further side of eternity which leads back from the infinite future to the infinite past, it evidently proceeds by contraries.
318. I believe the law of habit to be purely psychical. But then I suppose matter is merely mind deadened by the development of habit. While every physical process can be reversed without violation of the law of mechanics, the law of habit forbids such reversal. Accordingly, time may have been evolved by the action of habit. At first sight, it seems absurd or mysterious to speak of time being evolved, for evolution presupposes time. But after all, this is no serious objection, and nothing can be simpler. Time consists in a regularity in the relations of interacting feelings. The first chaos consisted in an infinite multitude of unrelated feelings. As there was no continuity about them, it was, as it were, a powder of feelings. It was worse than that, for of particles of powder some are nearer together, others farther apart, while these feelings had no relations, for relations are general. Now you must not ask me what happened first. This would be as absurd as to ask what is the smallest finite number. But springing away from the infinitely distant past to a very very distant past, we find already evolution had been going on for an infinitely long time. But this "time" is only our way of saying that something had been going on. There was no real time so far as there was no regularity, but there is no more falsity in using the language of time than in saying that a quantity is zero. In this chaos of feelings, bits of similitude had appeared, been swallowed up again. Had reappeared by chance. A slight tendency to generalization had here and there lighted up and been quenched. Had reappeared, had strengthened itself. Like had begun to produce like. Then even pairs of unlike feelings had begun to have similars, and then these had begun to generalize. And thus relations of contiguity, that is connections other than similarities, had sprung up. All this went on in ways I cannot now detail till the feelings were so bound together that a passable approximation to a real time was established. It is not to be supposed that the ideally perfect time has even yet been realized. There are no doubt occasional lacunae and derailments. (Ed.) The letter breaks off here without a period. †4
Chapter 7: To F.C.S. Schiller, On Pragmatism (Ed.) Paragraphs 319-320 (originally one paragraph) are from an undated letter; paragraphs 321-326 are from a letter dated Sept. 10, 1906. Both letters are in Widener VB2a and bear the salutation, "My dear Mr. Schiller." Neither is signed. †1
319. . . . I think the very first application that should be made of pragmatism of any stripe is to define words. Renouvier (in his 'Essais de Critique Philosophique' or elsewhere) has well said that as regards definitions in philosophy there are two classes of words. The one class consists [of] technical terms which ought to be defined before they are used and which ought to be supplanted by new terms and not by new definitions of old terms; the other class consists of the words of the vernacular, representing the vague ideas of common sense, which it is a part of the business of philosophy to discover the definitions of. You consider "real" to belong to the latter class. I hold that it ought to be kept in the former class where it was put by Duns Scotus who brought the word into common use, Albertus Magnus having only occasionally employed it, borrowing it from the law phrase 'real property.' As to the plasticity of the real, I am, on one side, entirely with you, having in 1892 and 1893 [argued] . . . that it is presumable that the laws of nature are not absolutely rigid. (Ed.) In [Bibliography] G-1891-1. †2 And whether they be so or not, it is to my mind quite certain that there are general signs, — namely, laws of nature, — which influence, or determine, actual events, and equally certain there are also other general signs which, having been shaped in human reasoning, further influence, or determine, muscular contractions, and through these, other actual events . . .
320. I do not know whether or not you will approve of my particular way of denying Necessitarianism. But as it is certain that the proposition that every physical event is directly determined by dynamical non-telic conditions and laws alone while every mental representation is directly determined by logical and, as such, telic conditions and laws alone, does not conflict with the proposition that physical events are determined by mental representations and mental representations by physical events (Ed.) Cf. 7.370. †3 (as every student of G. Cantor will perceive); so on the other hand the propositions that the laws of nature are not absolute and that important physical events are due to human reasoning are far from proving that human action is (in any important degree) free, except in the sense that a man is a machine with automatic controls, one over another, for five or six grades, at least. I, for my part, am very dubious as to man's having more freedom than that, nor do I see what pragmatic meaning there is in saying that he has more. The power of self-control is certainly not a power over what one is doing at the very instant the operation of self-control is commenced. It consists (to mention only the leading constituents) first, in comparing one's past deeds with standards, second, in rational deliberation concerning how one will act in the future, in itself a highly complicated operation, third, in the formation of a resolve, fourth, in the creation, on the basis of the resolve, of a strong determination, or modification of habit. This operation of self-control is a process in which logical sequence is converted into mechanical sequence or something of the sort. How this happens, we are in my opinion as yet entirely ignorant. There is a class of signs in which the logical sequence is at the same time a mechanical sequence and very likely this fact enters into the explanation.
— * —
321. Let me thank you very particularly for sending me a copy of your last article (Ed.) "Pragmatism and Pseudo-Pragmatism," Mind n.s. 15(July 1906) 375-390. This is the last paper in a controversy between F.C.S. Schiller and A.E. Taylor in Mind, n.s. vols. 14 and 15. †4 which I have read with profit and entertainment, as I do all of your articles that I am so fortunate as to see.
322. Of course I agree entirely to most of what you say, — as well as I can understand it without having seen any writing of Taylor. For example, I agree that of the two implications of pragmatism that concepts are purposive, and that their meaning lies in their conceivable practical bearings, the former is the more fundamental. I think, however, that the doctrine would be quite estropiée without the latter point. By "practical" I mean apt to affect conduct; and by conduct, voluntary action that is self-controlled, i.e. controlled by adequate deliberation. But the neater definition you put into a footnote is worth fully all you claim for it. (Ed.) Schiller defines "the practical as 'whatever tends to the control of events'" in Mind n.s. 15(July 1906)386. †5
323. However, it would be idle to write merely to note points of agreement. They are too many. Let me rather note that some of the ends which you mention as going to the meanings of concepts seem to me to form no part of those meanings. What the hundredth decimal figure of π means consists to my mind in just what any other figure means. For it is quite conceivable that it should be an important practical quantity. It is one of the beauties of pragmatism that it gives some symbols much more meaning than others, and the hundredth figure of π certainly has precious little. A much better question is, What on pragmatist principles is the difference between a rational and an irrational quantity or what it means to say that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side? It is interpreted in the conduct of the arithmetician as such. . .
324. As for Cantor's cardinal transfinites, though called numbers by him, they are not properly so called but are multitudes, or many-nesses of infinite collections. The first is the multitude of the objects of an endless series of objects. I call it the denumeral multitude. The next is the multitude of all collections of objects involved in an endless series (by collection I mean simply a plural). The rest are each the multitude of all collections involved in a collection of the next preceding multitude. I call these the abnumerable multitudes. . .
325. These abnumerable multitudes are describable intelligibly and exactly, but only in general terms. No precise idea can be formed of the simplest of them; and they increase in difficulty at a frightful rate (that is in the characters that would make difficulty if it were surmountable at all). If anything violates the principle of pragmatism it is these. But I have no doubt whatever of the validity of the concepts. They are interpretable in the conduct of the logician or logico-mathematician in dealing with them. If they were not exact, so as [to] lay definite logical obligations upon him they would be meaningless, or without definite meaning.
326. When you say that Logical consequences cannot be separated from psychological effects, etc. in my opinion you are merely adopting a mode of expression highly inconvenient which cannot help, but can only confuse, any sound argumentation. It is a part of nominalism which is utterly antipragmatistic, as I think, and mere refusal to make use of valuable forms of thought.
Chapter 8: To Lady Welby
§1. On Signs and the Categories (Ed.) From a letter dated "1904 Oct 12" to "My dear Lady Welby." A photostat copy of the original letter is in the Yale University Library. The complete letter is also in [Bibliography] M-20a, pp. 7-14, published by Whitlock's, Inc., New Haven, Conn., with whose permission the parts given here and the quotations in 330n4 and 330n6 are reprinted. Lady Victoria Welby was an English semanticist, at one time Maid of Honour to Queen Victoria. For Peirce's review of her What is Meaning? see Book I of the present volume. For additional correspondence see [Bibliography] M-20. †1
327. But I wanted to write to you about signs, which in your opinion and mine are matters of so much concern. More in mine, I think, than in yours. For in mine, the highest grade of reality is only reached by signs; that is by such ideas as those of Truth and Right and the rest. It sounds paradoxical; but when I have devolved to you my whole theory of signs, it will seem less so. I think that I will today explain the outlines of my classification of signs.
328. You know that I particularly approve of inventing new words for new ideas. I do not know that the study I call Ideoscopy can be called a new idea, but the word phenomenology is used in a different sense. (Ed.) Peirce's phenomenology and categories are discussed at various places in [CP], especially in [CP] I, Book III. See also 7.524-538. †2 Ideoscopy consists in describing and classifying the ideas that belong to ordinary experience or that naturally arise in connection with ordinary life, without regard to their being valid or invalid or to their psychology. In pursuing this study I was long ago (1867) led, after only three or four years' study, to throw all ideas into the three classes of Firstness, of Secondness, and of Thirdness. (Ed.) In [Bibliography] G-1867-1c, 1.545-559. †3 This sort of notion is as distasteful to me as to anybody; and for years, I endeavored to pooh-pooh and refute it; but it long ago conquered me completely. Disagreeable as it is to attribute such meaning to numbers, and to a triad above all, it is as true as it is disagreeable. The ideas of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness are simple enough. Giving to being the broadest possible sense, to include ideas as well as things, and ideas that we fancy we have just as much as ideas we do have, I should define Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness thus:
Firstness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, positively and without reference to anything else.
Secondness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, with respect to a second but regardless of any third.
Thirdness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, in bringing a second and third into relation to each other.
I call these three ideas the cenopythagorean categories.
329. The typical ideas of firstness are qualities of feeling, or mere appearances. The scarlet of your royal liveries, the quality itself, independently of its being perceived or remembered, is an example, by which I do not mean that you are to imagine that you do not perceive or remember it, but that you are to drop out of account that which may be attached to it in perceiving or in remembering, but which does not belong to the quality. For example, when you remember it, your idea is said to be dim and when it is before your eyes, it is vivid. But dimness or vividness do not belong to your idea of the quality. They might no doubt, if considered simply as a feeling; but when you think of vividness you do not consider it from that point of view. You think of it as a degree of disturbance of your consciousness. The quality of red is not thought of as belonging to you, or as attached to liveries. It is simply a peculiar positive possibility regardless of anything else. If you ask a mineralogist what hardness is, he will say that it is what one predicates of a body that one cannot scratch with a knife. But a simple person will think of hardness as a simple positive possibility the realization of which causes a body to be like a flint. That idea of hardness is an idea of Firstness. The unanalyzed total impression made by any manifold not thought of as actual fact, but simply as a quality, as simple positive possibility of appearance, is an idea of Firstness. Notice the naïveté of Firstness. The cenopythagorean categories are doubtless another attempt to characterize what Hegel sought to characterize as his three stages of thought. They also correspond to the three categories of each of the four triads of Kant's table. But the fact that these different attempts were independent of one another (the resemblance of these Categories to Hegel's stages was not remarked for many years after the list had been under study, owing to my antipathy to Hegel) only goes to show that there really are three such elements. The idea of the present instant, which, whether it exists or not, is naturally thought as a point of time in which no thought can take place or any detail be separated, is an idea of Firstness.
330. The type of an idea of Secondness is the experience of effort, prescinded from the idea of a purpose. It may be said that there is no such experience, that a purpose is always in view as long as the effort is cognized. This may be open to doubt; for in sustained effort we soon let the purpose drop out of view. However, I abstain from psychology which has nothing to do with ideoscopy. The existence of the word effort is sufficient proof that people think they have such an idea; and that is enough. The experience of effort cannot exist without the experience of resistance. Effort only is effort by virtue of its being opposed; and no third element enters. Note that I speak of the experience, not of the feeling, of effort. Imagine yourself to be seated alone at night in the basket of a balloon, far above earth, calmly enjoying the absolute calm and stillness. Suddenly the piercing shriek of a steam-whistle breaks upon you, and continues for a good while. The impression of stillness was an idea of Firstness, a quality of feeling. The piercing whistle does not allow you to think or do anything but suffer. So that too is absolutely simple. Another Firstness. But the breaking of the silence by the noise was an experience. The person in his inertness identifies himself with the precedent state of feeling, and the new feeling which comes in spite of him is the non-ego. He has a two-sided consciousness of an ego and a non-ego. That consciousness of the action of a new feeling in destroying the old feeling is what I call an experience. Experience generally is what the course of life has compelled me to think. Secondness is either genuine or degenerate. There are many degrees of genuineness. Generally speaking genuine secondness consists in one thing acting upon another, — brute action. I say brute, because so far as the idea of any law or reason comes in, Thirdness comes in. When a stone falls to the ground, the law of gravitation does not act to make it fall. The law of gravitation is the judge upon the bench who may pronounce the law till doomsday, but unless the strong arm of the law, the brutal sheriff, gives effect to the law, it amounts to nothing. True, the judge can create a sheriff if need be; but he must have one. The stone's actually falling is purely the affair of the stone and the earth at the time. This is a case of reaction. So is existence which is the mode of being of that which reacts with other things. But there is also action without reaction. Such is the action of the previous upon the subsequent. (Ed.) "The italicized sentence is, in manuscript, underlined in pencil. Perhaps it was underlined by Lady Welby, yet it was not her habit to annotate Peirce's letters." From [Bibliography] M-20a, p. 9. †4 It is a difficult question whether the idea of this one-sided determination is a pure idea of secondness or whether it involves thirdness. At present, the former view seems to me correct. I suppose that when Kant made Time a form of the internal sense alone, he was influenced by some such considerations as the following. The relation between the previous and the subsequent consists in the previous being determinate and fixed for the subsequent, and the subsequent being indeterminate for the previous. But indeterminacy belongs only to ideas; the existent is determinate in every respect; and this is just what the law of causation consists in. Accordingly, the relation of time concerns only ideas. It may also be argued that, according to the law of the conservation of energy, there is nothing in the physical universe corresponding to our idea that the previous determines the subsequent in any way in which the subsequent does not determine the previous. For, according to that law, all that happens in the physical universe consists in the exchange of just so much vis viva 1/2m(ds/dt)2 for so much displacement. Now the square of a negative quantity being positive, it follows that if all the velocities were reversed at any instant, everything would go on just the same, only time going backward as it were. Everything that had happened would happen again in reversed order. These seem to me to be strong arguments to prove that temporal causation (a very different thing from physical dynamic action) is an action upon ideas and not upon existents. (Ed.) Reversible and irreversible actions are discussed further in Chapter 3, "Habit," [CP] VII, Book III. †5 But since our idea of the past is precisely the idea of that which is absolutely determinate, fixed, fait accompli, and dead, as against the future which is living, plastic, and determinable, it appears to me that the idea of one-sided action, in so far as it concerns the being of the determinate, is a pure idea of Secondness; and I think that great errors of metaphysics are due to looking at the future as something that will have been past. I cannot admit that the idea of the future can be so translated into the Secundal ideas of the past. To say that a given kind of event never will happen is to deny that there is any date at which its happening will be past; but it is not equivalent to any affirmation about a past relative to any assignable date. When we pass from the idea of an event to saying that it never will happen, or will happen in endless repetition, or introduce in any way the idea of endless repetition, I will say the idea is mellonized ({mellön}}, about to be, do, or suffer). When I conceive a fact as acting but not capable of being acted upon, I will say that it is parelelythose ({parelélythös}, past) and the mode of being which consists in such action I will call parelelythosine (-ine = {einai}, being); I regard the former as an idea of Thirdness, the latter as an idea of Secondness. I consider the idea of any dyadic relation not involving any third as an idea of Secondness; and I should not call any completely degenerate except the relation of identity. But similarity which is the only possible identity of Firsts is very near to that. Dyadic relations have been classified by me in a great variety of ways; but the most important are, first, with regard to the nature of the Second in itself and, second, with regard to the nature of its First. The Second, or Relate, (Ed.) "'Relate', in manuscript, is underlined in pencil." From [Bibliography] M-20a, p. 10. †6 is, in itself, either a Referate, if it is intrinsically a possibility, such as a quality, or it is a Revelate if it is of its own nature an Existent. In respect to its First, the Second is divisible either in regard to the dynamic first or to the immediate first. In regard to its dynamic first, a Second is determined either by virtue of its own intrinsic nature, or by virtue of a real relation to that second (an action). Its immediate second is either a Quality or an Existent.
331. I now come to Thirdness. To me, who have for forty years considered the matter from every point of view that I could discover, the inadequacy of Secondness to cover all that is in our minds is so evident that I scarce know how to begin to persuade any person of it who is not already convinced of it. Yet I see a great many thinkers who are trying to construct a system without putting any thirdness into it. Among them are some of my best friends who acknowledge themselves indebted to me for ideas but have never learned the principal lesson. Very well. It is highly proper that Secondness should be searched to its very bottom. Thus only can the indispensableness and irreducibility of thirdness be made out, although for him who has the mind to grasp it, it is sufficient to say that no branching of a line can result from putting one line on the end of another. (Ed.) Cf. 1.347, 3.421. †7 My friend Schröder fell in love with my algebra of dyadic relations. The few pages I gave to it in my Note B in the 'Studies in Logic by Members of the Johns Hopkins University' were proportionate to its importance. (Ed.) [Bibliography] G-1883-7d, 3.328-358. †8 His book is profound, (Ed.) Cf. [Bibliography] G-1896-6. †9 but its profundity only makes it more clear that Secondness cannot compass Thirdness. (He is careful to avoid ever saying that it can, but he does go so far as to say that Secondness is the more important. So it is, considering that Thirdness cannot be understood without Secondness. But as to its application, it is so inferior to Thirdness as to be in that aspect quite in a different world.) Even in the most degenerate form of Thirdness, and thirdness has two grades of degeneracy, something may be detected which is not mere secondness. If you take any ordinary triadic relation, you will always find a mental element in it. Brute action is secondness, any mentality involves thirdness. Analyze for instance the relation involved in 'A gives B to C.' Now what is giving? It does not consist [in] A's putting B away from him and C's subsequently taking B up. It is not necessary that any material transfer should take place. It consists in A's making C the possessor according to Law. There must be some kind of law before there can be any kind of giving, — be it but the law of the strongest. But now suppose that giving did consist merely in A's laying down the B which C subsequently picks up. That would be a degenerate form of Thirdness in which the thirdness is externally appended. In A's putting away B, there is no thirdness. In C's taking B, there is no thirdness. But if you say that these two acts constitute a single operation by virtue of the identity of the B, you transcend the mere brute fact, you introduce a mental element . . . . The criticism which I make on [my] algebra of dyadic relations, with which I am by no means in love, though I think it is a pretty thing, is that the very triadic relations which it does not recognize, it does itself employ. For every combination of relatives to make a new relative is a triadic relation irreducible to dyadic relations. Its inadequacy is shown in other ways, but in this way it is in a conflict with itself if it be regarded, as I never did regard it, as sufficient for the expression of all relations. My universal algebra of relations, with the subjacent indices and Σ and π, is susceptible of being enlarged so as to comprise everything; and so, still better, though not to ideal perfection, is the system of existential graphs. (Ed.) This is treated at length in [CP] IV, Book II. †10
332. I have not sufficiently applied myself to the study of the degenerate forms of Thirdness, though I think I see that it has two distinct grades of degeneracy. In its genuine form, Thirdness is the triadic relation existing between a sign, its object, and the interpreting thought, itself a sign, considered as constituting the mode of being of a sign. (Ed.) Signs are discussed at various places in [CP]. See 8.313ff., 2.227ff., and the letter following the present one. See also [Bibliography] M-20a. †11 A sign mediates between the interpretant sign and its object. Taking sign in its broadest sense, its interpretant is not necessarily a sign. Any concept is a sign, of course. Ockham, Hobbes, and Leibniz have sufficiently said that. But we may take a sign in so broad a sense that the interpretant of it is not a thought, but an action or experience, or we may even so enlarge the meaning of sign that its interpretant is a mere quality of feeling. A Third is something which brings a First into relation to a Second. A sign is a sort of Third. How shall we characterize it? Shall we say that a Sign brings a Second, its Object, into cognitive relation to a Third? That a Sign brings a Second into the same relation to a first in which it stands itself to that First? If we insist on consciousness, we must say what we mean by consciousness of an object. Shall we say we mean Feeling? Shall we say we mean association, or Habit? These are, on the face of them, psychological distinctions, which I am particular to avoid. What is the essential difference between a sign that is communicated to a mind, and one that is not so communicated? If the question were simply what we do mean by a sign, it might soon be resolved. But that is not the point. We are in the situation of a zoölogist who wants to know what ought to be the meaning of "fish" in order to make fishes one of the great classes of vertebrates. It appears to me that the essential function of a sign is to render inefficient relations efficient, — not to set them into action, but to establish a habit or general rule whereby they will act on occasion. According to the physical doctrine, nothing ever happens but the continued rectilinear velocities with the accelerations that accompany different relative positions of the particles. All other relations, of which we know so many, are inefficient. Knowledge in some way renders them efficient; and a sign is something by knowing which we know something more. With the exception of knowledge, in the present instant, of the contents of consciousness in that instant (the existence of which knowledge is open to doubt) all our thought and knowledge is by signs. A sign therefore is an object which is in relation to its object on the one hand and to an interpretant on the other, in such a way as to bring the interpretant into a relation to the object, corresponding to its own relation to the object. I might say 'similar to its own' for a correspondence consists in a similarity; but perhaps correspondence is narrower.
333. I am now prepared to give my division of signs, as soon as I have pointed out that a sign has two objects, its object as it is represented and its object in itself. It has also three interpretants, its interpretant as represented or meant to be understood, its interpretant as it is produced, and its interpretant in itself. Now signs may be divided as to their own material nature, as to their relations to their objects, and as to their relations to their interpretants.
334. As it is in itself, a sign is either of the nature of an appearance, when I call it a qualisign; or secondly, it is an individual object or event, when I call it a sinsign (the syllable sin being the first syllable of semel, simul, singular, etc.); or thirdly, it is of the nature of a general type, when I call it a legisign. As we use the term 'word' in most cases, saying that 'the' is one 'word' and 'an' is a second 'word,' a 'word' is a legisign. But when we say of a page in a book, that it has 250 'words' upon it, of which twenty are 'the's, the 'word' is a sinsign. A sinsign so embodying a legisign, I term a 'replica' of the legisign. The difference between a legisign and a qualisign, neither of which is an individual thing, is that a legisign has a definite identity, though usually admitting a great variety of appearances. Thus, &, and, and the sound are all one word. The qualisign, on the other hand, has no identity. It is the mere quality of an appearance and is not exactly the same throughout a second. Instead of identity, it has great similarity, and cannot differ much without being called quite another qualisign.
335. In respect to their relations to their dynamic objects, I divide signs into Icons, Indices, and Symbols (a division I gave in 1867). (Ed.) 1.558 ([Bibliography] G-1867-1c). †12 I define an Icon as a sign which is determined by its dynamic object by virtue of its own internal nature. Such is any qualisign, like a vision, — or the sentiment excited by a piece of music considered as representing what the composer intended. Such may be a sinsign, like an individual diagram; say a curve of the distribution of errors. I define an Index as a sign determined by its dynamic object by virtue of being in a real relation to it. Such is a Proper Name (a legisign); such is the occurrence of a symptom of a disease. (The symptom itself is a legisign, a general type of a definite character. The occurrence in a particular case is a sinsign.) I define a Symbol as a sign which is determined by its dynamic object only in the sense that it will be so interpreted. It thus depends either upon a convention, a habit, or a natural disposition of its interpretant or of the field of its interpretant (that of which the interpretant is a determination). Every symbol is necessarily a legisign; for it is inaccurate to call a replica of a legisign a symbol.
336. In respect to its immediate object a sign may either be a sign of a quality, of an existent, or of a law.
337. In regard to its relation to its signified interpretant, a sign is either a Rheme, a Dicent, or an Argument. This corresponds to the old division, Term, Proposition, and Argument, modified so as to be applicable to signs generally. A Term is simply a class-name or proper-name. I do not regard the common noun as an essentially necessary part of speech. Indeed, it is only fully developed as a separate part of speech in the Aryan languages and the Basque, — possibly in some other out of the way tongues. In the Shemitic languages it is generally in form a verbal affair, and usually is so in substance, too. As well as I can make out, such it is in most languages. In my universal algebra of logic there is no common noun. A rheme is any sign that is not true nor false, like almost any single word except 'yes' and 'no,' which are almost peculiar to modern languages. A proposition as I use that term, is a dicent symbol. A dicent is not an assertion, but is a sign capable of being asserted. But an assertion is a dicent. According to my present view (I may see more light in future) the act of assertion is not a pure act of signification. It is an exhibition of the fact that one subjects oneself to the penalties visited on a liar if the proposition asserted is not true. An act of judgment is the self-recognition of a belief; and a belief consists in the deliberate acceptance of a proposition as a basis of conduct. But I think this position is open to doubt. It is simply a question of which view gives the simplest view of the nature of the proposition. Holding, then, that a Dicent does not assert, I naturally hold that an Argument need not actually be submitted or urged. I therefore define an argument as a sign which is represented in its signified interpretant not as a Sign of that interpretant (the conclusion) [for that would be to urge or submit it] (Ed.) The brackets are Peirce's. †13 but as if it were a Sign of the Interpretant or perhaps as if it were a Sign of the state of the universe to which it refers, in which the premisses are taken for granted. I define a dicent as a sign represented in its signified interpretant as if it were in a Real Relation to its Object. (Or as being so, if it is asserted.) A rheme is defined as a sign which is represented in its signified interpretant as if it were a character or mark (or as being so).
338. According to my present view, a sign may appeal to its dynamic interpretant in three ways:
1st, an argument only may be submitted to its interpretant, as something the reasonableness of which will be acknowledged.
2nd, an argument or dicent may be urged upon the interpretant by an act of insistence.
3rd, argument or dicent may be, and a rheme can only be, presented to the interpretant for contemplation.
339. Finally, in its relation to its immediate interpretant, I would divide signs into three classes as follows:
1st, those which are interpretable in thoughts or other signs of the same kind in infinite series,
2nd, those which are interpretable in actual experiences,
3rd, those which are interpretable in qualities of feelings or appearances.
340. Now if you think on the whole (as I do) that there is much valuable truth in all this, I should be gratified if you cared to append it to the next edition of your book, after editing it and of course cutting out personalities of a disagreeable kind, ESPECIALLY IF [IT WERE] ACCOMPANIED BY ONE OR MORE (running or other) CLOSE CRITICISMS; for I haven't a doubt there is more or less error involved . . . .
341. P.S. On the whole, then, I should say there were ten principal classes of signs
1. Qualisigns
2. Iconic Sinsigns
3. Iconic Legisigns
4. Vestiges, or Rhematic Indexical Sinsigns
5. Proper Names, or Rhematic Indexical Legisigns
6. Rhematic Symbols
7. Dicent Sinsigns (as a portrait with a legend)
8. Dicent Indexical Legisigns
9. Propositions, or Dicent Symbols
10. Arguments. (Ed.) Cf. 2.254 and [Bibliography] M-20a, Appendix B. †14
§2. On the Classification of Signs (Ed.) From a partial draft of a letter to Lady Welby, bearing dates of 24, 25, and 28 December 1908, Widener IB3a, with an added quotation in 368n23. The editor has made more than the usual number of alterations in punctuation, capitalization, etc., in both this and the previous letter, and in the present letter he has made several changes in format. In a letter to Lady Welby, with dates 31 January, 24 February, and 14 March 1909, Peirce says: "I find in my portfolio some part of a letter, if not the whole, dated December 28. I suppose I sent you that" [Bibliography] M-20a, p. 35. It is probable that in this passage Peirce is referring to the letter printed here. This letter never reached Lady Welby; cf. Other Dimensions: A Selection from the Later Correspondence of Victoria Lady Welby, p. 309n1 (listed with [Bibliography] M-20a). The letter printed here resembles, but is distinct from, a letter with dates of 14 and 23 December 1908, printed in [Bibliography] M-20a, pp. 22-32, q.v. †15
342. The publishers of the Britannica have given an unequivocal earnest of their determination to make every edition of their encyclopaedia maintain its supereminence in employing editors who would enlist you for an epitome of your exploration of "significs." (Ed.) Lady Welby wrote "Significs" for the 11th edition of The Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1910-11. †16 It greatly encourages me in my endeavours, since, as well as I can make out, what you call "significs" is equivalent to the study that I entitle logic. In my paper of 1867 May 14 (Proc. Am. Acad. of Arts & Sci., Vol. VII, p. 295) I said, "We come to this, that logic treats of the reference of symbols in general to their objects. In this view it is one of a trivium of conceivable sciences. The first would treat of the formal conditions of symbols having meaning, that is of the reference of symbols in general to their grounds, or imputed characters; and this might be called Formal Grammar [the grammatica speculativa of Duns]. The second, logic, would treat of the formal conditions of the truth of symbols. The third would treat of the formal conditions of the force of symbols, or their power of appealing to a mind, that is, of their reference in general to interpretants, and this might be called formal rhetoric." (Ed.) 1.559 ([Bibliography] G-1867-1c). The brackets are in the manuscript. †17 I should still opine that in the future there probably will be three such sciences. But I have learned that the only natural lines of demarcation between nearly related sciences are the divisions between the social groups of devotees of those sciences; and for the present the cenoscopic studies (i.e., those studies which do not depend upon new special observations) of all signs remain one undivided science, — a conclusion I had come to before I made your acquaintance, but which the warm interest that you and I have in each other's researches in spite of the difference in their lines, decidedly confirms.
343. It seems to me that one of the first useful steps toward a science of semeiotic ({sémeiötiké}), or the cenoscopic science of signs, must be the accurate definition, or logical analysis, of the concepts of the science. (Ed.) For references to other discussions of signs, see 332n11. †18 I define a Sign as anything which on the one hand is so determined by an Object and on the other hand so determines an idea in a person's mind, that this latter determination, which I term the Interpretant of the sign, is thereby mediately determined by that Object. A sign, therefore, has a triadic relation to its Object and to its Interpretant. But it is necessary to distinguish the Immediate Object, or the Object as the Sign represents it, from the Dynamical Object, or really efficient but not immediately present Object. It is likewise requisite to distinguish the Immediate Interpretant, i.e. the Interpretant represented or signified in the Sign, from the Dynamic Interpretant, or effect actually produced on the mind by the Sign; and both of these from the Normal Interpretant, or effect that would be produced on the mind by the Sign after sufficient development of thought. On these considerations I base a recognition of ten respects in which Signs may be divided. I do not say that these divisions are enough. But since every one of them turns out to be a trichotomy, it follows that in order to decide what classes of signs result from them, I have 310 or 59049, difficult questions to carefully consider; and therefore I will not undertake to carry my systematical division of signs any further, but will leave that for future explorers.
344. The ten respects according to which the chief divisions of signs are determined are as follows:
1st, According to the Mode of Apprehension of the Sign itself,
2nd, According to the Mode of Presentation of the Immediate Object,
3rd, According to the Mode of Being of the Dynamical Object,
4th, According to the Relation of the Sign to its Dynamical Object,
5th, According to the Mode of Presentation of the Immediate Interpretant,
6th, According to the Mode of Being of the Dynamical Interpretant,
7th, According to the Relation of the Sign to the Dynamical Interpretant,
8th, According to the Nature of the Normal Interpretant,
9th, According to the Relation of the Sign to the Normal Interpretant,
10th, According to the Triadic Relation of the Sign to its Dynamical Object and to its Normal Interpretant.
345. The ten divisions appear to me to be all Trichotomies; but it is possible that some of them are not properly so. Of these Ten Trichotomies, I have a clear apprehension of some, (which I mark δ for {délos}), an unsatisfactory and doubtful notion of others (which I mark α for {adélos}), and a tolerable but not thoroughly tried conception of others (which I mark μ for {metrios}, σ for {schedon}, almost clear, χ for {chalepös} hardly better than α).
The Ten Main Trichotomies of Signs
(as they are apprehended by me 1908 Dec. 24)
346. I. A Sign is necessarily in itself present to the Mind of its Interpreter. Now there are three entirely different ways in which Objects are present to minds: (Ed.) For references to discussions of Peirce's categories, see 328n2. †19
First, in themselves as they are in themselves. Namely, Feelings are so present. At the first instant of waking from profound sleep when thought, or even distinct perception, is not yet awake, if one has gone to bed more asleep than awake in a large, strange room with one dim candle. At the instant of waking the tout ensemble is felt as a unit. The feeling of the skylark's song in the morning, of one's first hearing of the English nightingale.
Secondly, the sense of something opposing one's Effort, something preventing one from opening a door slightly ajar; which is known in its individuality by the actual shock, the Surprising element, in any Experience which makes it sui generis.
Thirdly, that which is stored away in one's Memory; Familiar, and as such, General.
347. Consequently, Signs, in respect to their Modes of possible Presentation, are divisible (σ) into
A. Potisigns, or Objects which are signs so far as they are merely possible, but felt to be positively possible; as, for example, the seventh ray that passes through the three intersections of opposite sides of Pascal's hexagram.
B. Actisigns, or Objects which are Signs as Experienced hic et nunc; such as any single word in a single place in a single sentence of a single paragraph of a single page of a single copy of a book. There may be repetition of the whole paragraph, this word included, in another place. But that other occurrence is not this word. The book may be printed in an edition of ten thousand; but THIS word is only in my copy.
C. Famisigns, familiar signs, which must be General, as General signs must be familiar or composed of Familiar signs. (I speak of signs which are "general," not in the sense of signifying Generals, but as being themselves general; just as Charlemagne is general, in that it occurs many times with one and the same denotation.)
348. I think I might as well have marked this division δ instead of σ, except that perhaps the question may arise whether I ought not to have recognized a division according as the sign is a natural sign, which has no party to the dialogue as its author, or whether it be an uttered sign, and in the latter case, is the very sign that is getting uttered or another. But it seems to me that this division turns upon the question of whether or not the sign uttered is a sign of a sign as its Object. For must not every sign, in order to become a sign, get uttered?
349. II . . . . Objects may be presented in three ways, thus:
1st, As mere Ideas, or what might be if things were not as they are; such as a geometrical surface, or an absolutely definite or distinct notion.
2nd, As brutely compelling attention.
3rd, As Rationally recommending themselves, or as Habitudes to which one is already reconciled.
350. Adopting this enumeration as a basis of a division of Signs, I obtain
A. Descriptives, which determine their Objects by stating the characters of the latter.
B. Designatives (or Denotatives), or Indicatives, Denominatives, which like a Demonstrative pronoun, or a pointing finger, brutely direct the mental eyeballs of the interpreter to the object in question, which in this case cannot be given by independent reasoning.
C. Copulants, which neither describe nor denote their Objects, but merely express the logical relations of these latter to something otherwise referred to. (Ed.) Peirce had revised the manuscript here, but since his revision is unintelligible, we give the text as it was originally. †20 Such, among linguistic signs, as "If — then — ," " — is — ," " — causes — ," " — would be — ," " — is relative to — for — " "Whatever" etc.
351. Shall I appoint this famous distinction (as I have stated it, or modified [it] ) to the governance of my Second way of dividing Signs, or shall I yield this place to a distinction prominent in every language on earth, that between the three 'persons,' amo, amas, amat? If I and thou are the Objects, we say We; if thou and he are the Objects, we say Ye. But if I and We are the Objects to the exclusion of Thee, I know no other linguistic form than the French expression "Nous autres." I, Thou, and He can be expressed by the Tri-al and Quadral numbers of Polynesian languages. In English we can only say "We all of us." Thus there ought, logically one would say, to be seven grammatical persons, if any at all. But none at all are needed, if we have the Designative pronouns I, Thou, He. But hold! When I say there are only 7 persons I forget the differences between Thou and I are Anglo-Saxon. Thou and I are correspondents. Thou and I are endurer and endured. Thou and I are admired and admirer. Thou, he, and I are accuser to and of, accuser of and to, accused by and to, accused to and by, informed of by, informed by of. In short this distinction does not require any special form of sign, nor could any form be adequate without numerous variations.
352. On the other hand [is] the distinction of Designatives such as concrete subjects of signs or essentially nominative signs, [and] Descriptives such as Predicates and Predicative Signs (such as a portrait with a legend designating the person represented), [with] Abstract nouns to be reckoned among Descriptives. The copulants are likewise indispensable and have the property of being Continuant. What I mean is that the sign 'A is red' can be decomposed so as to separate 'is red' into a Copulative and a Descriptive, thus: 'A possesses the character of redness.' But if we attempt to analyze 'possesses the character' in like manner, we get 'A possesses the character of the possession of the character of Redness'; and so on ad infinitum. So it is, with 'A implies B,' 'A implies its implication of B,' etc. So with 'It rains and hails,' 'It rains concurrently with hailing,' 'It rains concurrently with the concurrence of hailing,' and so forth. I call all such sign Continuants. They are all Copulants and are the only pure copulants. These signs cannot be explicated: they must convey Familiar universal elementary relations of logic. We do not derive these notions from observation, nor by any sense of being opposed, but from our own reason. This trichotomy, then, sustains criticism and must be marked (μ) at least. I would mark it (δ) if I were satisfied with the distinction between Descriptives and Denominatives.
353. Before proceeding to the third trichotomy, let [us] inquire what relations, if any, are found between the two that have been brought to light. What I mean precisely by between these relations is whether or not the three members of the first trichotomy, which we may for the moment denote as 11, 12, 13, are or are not independent of the three members of the second, which we may denote by 21, 22, 23; so that they form nine classes, which, if we use a dot to mean "which is," will be denoted by
11·21 |
11·22 |
11·23 |
12·21 |
12·22 |
12·23 |
13·21 |
13·22 |
13·23 |
354. The inquiry ought, one would expect, to be an easy one, since both trichotomies depend on there being three Modes of Presence to the mind, which we may term
The Immediate, — The Direct, — The Familiar
Mode of Presence.
The difference between the two trichotomies is that the one refers to the Presence to the Mind of the Sign and the other to that of the Immediate Object. The Sign may have any Modality of Being, i.e., may belong to any one of the three Universes; its Immediate Object must be in some sense, in which the Sign need not be, Internal.
355. To begin, then, it is evident that an Actisign, or one that belongs to the Universe of Experience, which Brutely acts on the person, can also be a Denominative, that is, that its Immediate Object is represented as belonging to the same Universe; so that 12·22, the central class of our block of nine, is possible. Indeed, a pointing finger is a familiar example of a Sign of that class. Let us next ask whether all the four corner classes of the block are possible. We fully expect to find that a Potisign can be Descriptive and that a Famisign can be Copulant. But we may well doubt whether a Potisign can be Copulant or a Famisign can be Descriptive. Let us see.
356. Before taking up the cases, let me notice a source of possible confusion. By a "General Sign," or a "General Term," we do not, in the ordinary language of Logic, mean, as might be supposed, a Famisign. For we do not mean that the Sign itself is General: we only mean that its Object is so.
357. The Northern United States are full of I know not how many thousand "villages," as they are called in the State of New York, "towns" as they are called in New England, which are governed in a simple way by "town meetings" or otherwise; and in Pennsylvania "boroughs," whose head is a "chief burgess"; and there are also countless little places somewhat larger (especially in the West) called "cities." In the middle of any one of these where one might wander he would find a small green of an acre or two and in the middle of this will be a stone statue, often of granite, representing a common soldier standing in his regulation overcoat and resting on his grounded musket. Nothing imaginable could be more devoid of imagination, less idealized, less artistically beautiful. They are eye-sores to all cultivated people; but not to me. For I know that that means that almost every family in that place . . . had in the war of the southern rebellion sent its flower, who had no military instinct whatever, much less any hatred for southern people, to the war, bitterly contrary to all his instincts but simply from a sense of duty; and only a fraction of them came back. The very fact of their vulgarity, which the statue proclaims above all else, makes this universal self-sacrifice on the altar of the abstraction which we call the "general government" pathetically sublime. To each such family, that very realistic statue represents the mourned one who fell in the war. That statue is one piece of granite, and not a Famisign. Yet it is what we call a "General" sign, meaning that it is applicable to many singulars. It is not itself General; it is its Object which is taken to be General. And yet this Object is not truly Universal, in the sense of implying a truth of the kind of 'Any S is P'; it only expresses 'Some S is P.' This makes it not a Copulant (Copulative) but only a Descriptive. This needs to be borne in mind. And this warning having been noticed, we can proceed to inquire about the corners of our block of supposed classes, which I will designate according to the usual map that has N above, S below, E to the right, W to the left.
358. As to the NW corner, a Geometrical diagram is always capable of being imagined, seldom or never of existing; since the limits of solid bodies are the loci at which forces of cohesion are neither very great nor very small, which being vague, has not the character of a geometrical surface. The diagram is therefore a Potisign. It is clearly Descriptive; and therefore 11·21 is possible.
359. The verbal expression "If — , then — " is a Famisign, as all words are (in the sense in which two that are just alike are the very same "word"). It is also a Copulative since it expresses a universal sequence, 'If A, then C,' meaning that in every state of things whatever, either not-A or is-C is true. So that the SE corner 13·23 is possible.
360. "Given any 4 rays in space; then either there can be only 2 rays, at most, that cut them all, or there can be any number." True or not, this is a Copulant; and any single expression of it is an Actisign. It is also expressible in Existential Graphs in the form of a geometrical diagram, which is a Potisign. Therefore, the NE corner 11·23 is possible.
361. But can a Famisign be Descriptive? Everybody will make haste to cry, "Of course, it can: of course, a description can be expressed in words, when even a universal can." Yet, while I am more than usually sensible of the danger of my being mistaken, I venture, for the present, the opinion that it is not so. The proper way to pursue the inquiry is to start from the definition already given of the triadic relation of Sign-Object-Interpretant. We thus learn that the Object determines (i.e. renders definitely to be such as it will be,) the Sign in a particular manner. Now it is of the essence of the Sign to determine certain Ideas, i.e. certain Possibles; and it is the essence of any Tendency to determine Occurrences. Therefore, an Actisign or a Potisign may be a Copulative. But no Occurrence or collection of occurrences can logically determine a Habit or other Tendency. Thus, if wishing to test a die to see whether it is loaded (whether intentionally or not) I throw it say 900 times. If the different faces come up with as equal frequency as they could be expected to do, what can I infer? Only that as long as the habit or tendency of the die remains what it is, it will probably not bring the different faces up so unequally as to show decisively in 900 throws. That is, I base my inference on the assumption that there is some habit. Or take a simpler case. If I positively knew (what I cannot know) that a certain shilling had a habit when pitched to turn up heads and tails with equal frequency, then I should positively know that if it were pitched often enough, it would sometime turn up "heads." For if it always would turn up tails, that would constitute a habit contrary to the habit supposed to be known. (Ed.) See 8.225ff. †21 That known habit may be defined thus: Let a tally be kept of the heads as they occur and another of the tails; and after each throw let the exact quotient of the number of heads divided by the number of tails be calculated. Then, given any positive number (not zero therefore) there will certainly come a time after which none of the quotients will differ by as much as that number from 1. The value 1 being the only one about which the values of the quotients will never cease to oscillate. Thus the tendency consists entirely in what will be; and what has been has nothing to do with it. But what will be is not an Actual Occurrence. It is true that physiological and some other habits are determined by what has been done; but not by those occurrences of themselves, but only because there is a special Tendency by virtue of which what has been done will be done oftener than what has not been done. In general, it is of the essence of a Real Tendency that no Actual Occurrence can of itself determine it in any way. Whence a Denominative cannot be a Famisign. Whence the middle of the S side of the block 13·22 is impossible. But an Actual Occurrence always determines the Possibility of its character; whence no Descriptive can be a Famisign; or [i.e.] the SW corner of the block 13·21 is impossible. As an example of this, no number of Descriptive propositions of the type "Some S is P" can ever determine the truth of a Copulative Proposition "Any S is P." It is, if possible, still more obvious that Possibility can never determine Actuality and therefore a Descriptive cannot be an Actisign, or [i.e.] the middle of the W side of the block 12·21 is impossible. The remaining six classes are possible, i.e.,
Copulative Potisigns |
Denominative Potisigns Copulative Actisigns |
Descriptive Potisigns |
Denominative Actisigns |
Copulative Famisigns |
362. There are four objections that would probably be raised against my doctrine; but I will not lengthen this letter with the refutations of them. I have carefully considered them, and have found them to be unsound.
363. From the summer of 1905 to the same time in 1906, I devoted much study to my ten trichotomies of signs. It is time I reverted to the subject, as I know I could now make it much clearer. But I dare say some of my former names are better than those I now use. I formerly called a Potisign a Tinge or Tone, an Actisign a Token, a Famisign a Type; — a Descriptive an Indefinite (but this was bad), a Denominative a Designation, a Copulative (which is bad) a Distributive (which is much better).
364. I think Potisign, Actisign, [and] Famisign might be called Mark, Token, [and] Type(?) (Ed.) It is clear from the format of the manuscript that the question mark applies only to the term "type." †22 [respectively], while Descriptive, Denominative, [and] Copulative might be called Descriptive, Denominative, [and] Distributive, [respectively].
365. I have now given as much time to this letter as I can afford and I cannot now re-examine the remaining trichotomies, although I must do so as soon as possible. So I just give them as they stood two years and more ago. In particular, the relations I assumed between the different classes were the wildest guesses, and cannot be altogether right I think.
366. III. In respect to the Nature of their Dynamical Objects, Signs I found to be either
1. Signs of Possibles. That is Abstractives such as Color, Mass, Whiteness, etc.
2. Signs of Occurrences. That is Concretives such as Man, Charlemagne.
3. Signs of Collections. That is Collectives such as Mankind, the Human Race, etc.
By Abstractives I meant signs of immediate abstractions; but was in some doubt what to do with abstractions resulting from experiment. I thought it would be requisite to study subdivisions of these classes but never went into that research.
367. I was of the opinion that if the Dynamical Object be a mere Possible the Immediate Object could only be of the same nature, while if the Immediate Object were a Tendency or Habit then the Dynamical Object must be of the same nature. Consequently an Abstractive must be a Mark, while a Type must be a Collective, which shows how I conceived Abstractives and Collectives.
368. IV. The fourth Trichotomy is the one which I most frequently use: Icon, Index, (Ed.) "An index represents an object by virtue of its connection with it. It makes no difference whether the connection is natural, or artificial, or merely mental. There is, however, an important distinction between two classes of indices. Namely, some merely stand for things or individual quasi-things with which the interpreting mind is already acquainted, while others may be used to ascertain facts. Of the former class, which may be termed designations, personal, demonstrative, and relative pronouns, proper names, the letters attached to a geometrical figure, and the ordinary letters of algebra are examples. They act to force the attention to the thing intended. Designations are absolutely indispensable both to communication and to thought. No assertion has any meaning unless there is some designation to show whether the universe of reality or what universe of fiction is referred to. The other class of indices may be called reagents. Thus water placed in a vessel with a shaving of camphor thrown upon it will show whether the vessel is clean or not. If I say that I live two and a half miles from Milford, I mean that a rigid bar that would just reach from one line to another upon a certain bar in Westminster, might be successively laid down on the road from my house to Milford, 13200 times, and so laid down on my reader's road would give him a knowledge of the distance between my house and Milford. Thus, the expression "two miles and a half" is, not exactly a reagent, but a description of a reagent. A scream for help is not only intended to force upon the mind the knowledge that help is wanted, but also to force the will to accord it. It is, therefore, a reagent used rhetorically. Just as a designation can denote nothing unless the interpreting mind is already acquainted with the thing it denotes, so a reagent can indicate nothing unless the mind is already acquainted with its connection with the phenomenon it indicates." From "Notes on Topical Geometry," undated, Widener IA-2. †23 Symbol.
All the remaining six trichotomies have to do with the Interpretants, which you have, I imagine, studied much more thoroughly than I have done.
369. V. As to the nature of the Immediate (or Felt?) Interpretant, a sign may be: Ejaculative, or merely giving utterance to feeling; Imperative, including, of course, Interrogatives; Significative.
But later I made this the 7th Trichotomy and for the fifth substituted — with great hesitation—: Hypothetic, Categorical, Relative.
370. VI. As to the Nature of the Dynamical Interpretant: Sympathetic, or Congruentive; Shocking, or Percussive; Usual.
371. VII. As to the Manner of Appeal to the Dynamic Interpretant: Suggestive, Imperative, Indicative.
372. VIII. According to the Purpose of the Eventual Interpretant: Gratific; To produce action; To produce self-control.
373. IX. As to the Nature of the Influence of the Sign: Seme, like a simple sign; Pheme, with antecedent and consequent; Delome, with antecedent, consequent, and principle of sequence.
374. X. As to the Nature of the Assurance of the Utterance: assurance of Instinct; assurance of Experience; assurance of Form.
375. I don't know whether these trichotomies will suggest anything to you or not. No doubt you have studied relations to Interpretants in some directions much further than I . . . .
376. P.S. 1908 Dec 28. Well, dear Lady Welby, you deserve this infliction, for having spoken of my having "always been kindly [! ! !] interested in the work to which my life is devoted," (Ed.) The brackets are Peirce's. †24 when I have myself been entirely absorbed in the very same subject since 1863, without meeting, before I made your acquaintance, a single mind to whom it did not seem very like bosh. I add some scraps.
(Ed.) Cf. [Bibliography] M-20a, Appendix B. †25
The number above to the left describes the Object of the Sign. That above to the right describes its Interpretant. That below describes the Sign itself. 1 signifies the Possible Modality, that of an Idea. 2 signifies the Actual Modality, that of an Occurrence. 3 signifies the Necessary Modality, that of a Habit . . . .
377. I have often thought that if it were not that it would sound too German (and I have an utter contempt for German logic) I would entitle my logic-book (which is now coming on) "Logic considered as Semeiotic" (or probably Semeotic without the i;) but everybody would think I was translating als Semeiotik betrachtet, which I couldn't stand.
378. The fact that I have entertained this idea shows how near together you and I are. "Significs" sounds to me narrower than Semeotic, since signification is only one of the two chief functions of signs; as the elegant and correct John of Salisbury notices, in referring to "quod fere in omnium ore celebre est, aliud scilicet esse quod appellatiua significant, et aliud esse quod nominant. Nominantur singularia, sed uniuersalia significantur." (Metalogicus II. xx. I copy from the ed. of 1620.) (Ed.) See Clemens C.I. Webb, Ioannis Saresberiensis Episcopi Carnotensis Metalogicon, Oxford University Press, 1929, Liber II, Cap. 20, p. 104. †26 So significs appears to be limited to the study of the relations of Signs to their Interpretants; and I presume you do so limit it. On the other hand Logic is more interested in the Truth of Signs, i.e. in their relation to their Objects. But I am satisfied that in the present state of the subject, there is but one General science of the nature of Signs. If we were to separate it into two, — then, according to my idea that a "science," as scientific men use the word, implies a social group of devotees, we should be in imminent danger of erecting two groups of one member each! Whereas, if you and I stick together, we are, at least, two of us. I remember in my college days that the Statutes of Harvard defined a "group" as three persons or more convening together. We shall have to try to seduce one of the linguists to our more fundamental study. Max Müller was, in a feeble way, perhaps one of our group. I hope in your Britannica article you will adhere to the stern method of treatment proper to an Encyclopaedia, and show the reader that distinct positive discovery is what we are laboring upon. I remember one day, when I was in the twenties, on my way to the post-office I fell in with the novelist Wm. D. Howells, who began criticizing one of my articles from the point of view of rhetorical elegance. I said to him, "Mr. Howells, it is no part of the purpose of my writings to give readers pleasure." Such an idea was quite out of his horizon; and I heard of his repeating it as very amusing. People do not consult an encyclopaedia to be amused, but to receive definite instruction as condensed as clearness permits. I hope your article will cause readers to appreciate Significs as a study of grave importance not merely from the point of view of Morals, but also from that of Truth. But I am absolutely sure your article will be a valuable one however far it may depart from what I should wish the article to be. It must be so, simply because you have been a devoted student of the subject. It is your own message that you are to deliver and nobody else's.
379. It is a remarkable thing that no other people but the Greeks ever so felt the desire to avoid errors as to strike out a logic for themselves. All other logic down to the invention of the Doctrine of Chances was made on the Greek model. The Greeks so strongly felt that need that they erected no less than 5 independent systems! Namely, 1st, though Prantl's "Megaric logic" is poppy-cock, there are unmistakable indications of early strivings for a logical system; 2nd, came the logic of Socrates, who had a much clearer idea of what logic should be than such writers as Wundt, Chr. Sigwart, Jerusalem, Bradley, Bosanquet, Dewey, etc. etc., — not to notice the Joseph's and such quasi-minds, — have today; 3rd, passing by Plato, there was Aristotle; 4th, the Epicurean logic, very closely allied to Mill's system, yet distinctly different, as shown by the Herculaneum Papyrus of the {peri sémeiön kai sémeiöseön} of Philodemus; 5th, there was the logic illustrated by the strict methods of the mathematicians, — which was not merely a practice of reasoning, but was a definite theory of logic greatly superior to Aristotle's, as far as deductive reasoning is concerned. Here are my 5 without including either Zeno of {Helis} (Ed.) In early Greek this word was written with an initial symbol called digamma followed by {alis}. In the manuscript Peirce wrote a digamma followed by {élis}. We have substituted the conventional spelling since the digamma is no longer used. †27 nor Chrisippus, both original logicians.
Chapter 9: To F.A. Woods, On "Would Be" (Ed.) From a long letter to "My dear Dr. Woods," written over a period between 14 October 1913 and 19 November 1913, with an added quotation in 380n4. The letter was sent to Woods, but it is now in Widener VB2a. Frederick Adams Woods, M.D., was a lecturer in biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. †1
380. I have duly received the copy of your new work, (Ed.) The Influence of Monarchs, Steps in a New Science of History, The Macmillan Co., New York, 1913, xiii + 422 pp. †2 and have already read pp. iii-xiii, 1-46, and 196-417, and have found it perfectly convincing; so that my only criticism relates to Chap. XVIII, (Ed.) This chapter is titled, "Causation in History." †3 which, though convincing to me, might, I think, be improved by introducing, in some form, some considerations like the following: A conditional proposition, — say "If A, then B" is equivalent to saying that "Any state of things in which A should be true, would (within limits) be a state of things in which B is true." (Ed.) "An ordinary hypothetical proposition, as propositions containing an antecedent condition and a consequent result are called, relates to what would occur in states of things not all coincident with the existing state of things. Suppose I say 'If I were to upset the inkstand the table cloth would be injured.' This means that of all the different courses of events that might occur, the disposition of things in the room being what it is, every one is one in which either the inkstand is not upset or the tablecloth is spoiled." From an undated fragment, Widener IA-8. Cf. 5.453, 6.327, and 8.216. †4 It is therefore essentially an assertion of a general nature, the statement of a "would-be." But when the antecedent supposes an existential fact to be different from what it actually is or was, the conditional proposition does not accurately state anything; and if it conveys any meaning, i.e. if it is calculated to produce any state of mind, in a person who trusts in it, it must be that it establishes a habit in that mind, using the word "habit" in the original sense, as meaning only that the person or thing that has the habit, would behave (or usually behave) in a certain way whenever a certain occasion should arise. But if this occasion did in actuality not arise, such habit of thought as the conditional proposition might produce would be a nullity pragmatistically and practically. A historian simply talks nonsense when he says "If Napoleon had not done as he did before the battle of Leipzig (specifying in what respect his behaviour is supposed different from what it was) he would have won that battle." Such historian may have meant something; but he utterly fails to express any meaning.
381. To this it might be objected, that when a man deliberates as to what line of conduct he shall pursue, he will very advantageously consider conditional propositions whose antecedents are of the form "If I should do so and so." To this conceivable objection I should reply that the case of the deliberating mind and that of the futile historian's are essentially different in that the former reasons at some stage of his deliberations as follows (that is, he will unless he decides to verify the antecedent in question by adopting the contemplated line of conduct):
If I should do so and so, I should bring about such and such a result,
Now I will not bring about that result,
Ergo, I shall not do "so and so."
He thus comes to a profitable conclusion, provided he had not already fully made up his mind not to "do so and so," in which case he would be pursuing an idle dream, and a bad dream at that.
382. But the supposed historian knows well already that the supposition of the antecedent is false; and therefore he has no occasion to seek a proof that it is so; and there is no intelligent purpose to which he or anybody can put his conditional proposition, unless he can find enough similar instances about other persons belonging to the same class as Napoleon so that he will be able to make an induction serving as a maxim by which other men may profitably regulate their conduct. For instance, if Napoleon before the battle slept with his head close to a red hot stove, and was "not himself," as we say, during the battle, a historian may be excused for putting the two facts together. But unless there is some general antecedent to be gained in a reasonable manner, a conditional proposition with a singular antecedent known to be false, is worse than a puerility. It is downright nonsense, a series of words without meaning . . . .
383. . . . logicians generally almost always confine what they have to say about reasoning to its "correctness," by which they mean its leaving an absolute inability to doubt the truth of a conclusion so long as the premisses are assumed to be true. But that amounts to confining their study to deduction. When one thinks as long about certainty as I have done, one does not very often find oneself in this state of inability to doubt . . . .
384. I think logicians should have two principal aims: 1st, to bring out the amount and kind of security (approach to certainty) of each kind of reasoning, and 2nd, to bring out the possible and esperable uberty, or value in productiveness, of each kind.
385. I have always, since early in the sixties, recognized three different types of reasoning, viz: 1st, Deduction which depends on our confidence in our ability to analyze the meanings of the signs in or by which we think; 2nd, Induction, which depends upon our confidence that a run of one kind of experience will not be changed or cease without some indication before it ceases; and 3rd, Retroduction, or Hypothetic Inference, which depends on our hope, sooner or later, to guess at the conditions under which a given kind of phenomenon will present itself. (Ed.) These types of reasoning are discussed in more detail in [CP] VII, Book II, Chapter 3, "The Logic of Drawing History from Ancient Documents." †5
386. Each of these three types occurs in different forms requiring special studies.
387. From the 1st type to the 3rd the security decreases greatly, while the uberty as greatly increases . . . .
388. I don't think the adoption of a hypothesis on probation can properly be called induction; and yet it is reasoning and though its security is low, its uberty is high.
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