One, Two, Three

1.353   G-c.1880-2


        # 5. THE INTERDEPENDENCE
          OF THE CATEGORIES*

  353. Perhaps it is not right to call these categories
conceptions; they are so intangible that they are rather tones or tints
upon conceptions. In my first attempt to deal with them, ** I
made use of three grades of separability of one idea from
another. In the first place, two ideas may be so little allied

 * From "One, Two, Three," c. 1880.
 ** See ch. 6.

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that one of them may be present to the consciousness in an
image which does not contain the other at all; in this way we
can imagine red without imagining blue, and vice versa; we can
also imagine sound without melody, but not melody without
sound. I call this kind of separation dissociation. In the
second place, even in cases where two conceptions cannot be
separated in the imagination, we can often suppose one without
the other, that is we can imagine data from which we should
be led to believe in a state of things where one was separated
from the other. Thus, we can suppose uncolored space, though
we cannot dissociate space from color. I call this mode of
separation prescission. In the third place, even when one
element cannot even be supposed without another, they may
ofttimes be distinguished from one another. Thus we can neither
imagine nor suppose a taller without a shorter, yet we can
distinguish the taller from the shorter. I call this mode of
separation distinction. Now, the categories cannot be
dissociated in imagination from each other, nor from other ideas.
The category of first can be prescinded from second and third,
and second can be prescinded from third. But second cannot
be prescinded from first, nor third from second. The categories
may, I believe, be prescinded from any other one conception,
but they cannot be prescinded from some one and indeed many
elements. You cannot suppose a first unless that first be
something definite and more or less definitely supposed. Finally,
though it is easy to distinguish the three categories from one
another, it is extremely difficult accurately and sharply to
distinguish each from other conceptions so as to hold it in its
purity and yet in its full meaning.