Guess At the Riddle

1.1-2     G--c.1890-1 (c.1898)
1.354-368
1.373-375
1.379-416

|p7

  1. To erect a philosophical edifice that shall outlast the
vicissitudes of time, my care must be, not so much to set each
brick with nicest accuracy, as to lay the foundations deep and
massive. Aristotle builded upon a few deliberately chosen
concepts -- such as matter and form, act and power -- very
broad, and in their outlines vague and rough, but solid,
unshakable, and not easily undermined; and thence it has come
to pass that Aristotelianism is babbled in every nursery, that
"English Common Sense," for example, is thoroughly
peripatetic, and that ordinary men live so completely within the
house of the Stagyrite that whatever they see out of the
windows appears to them incomprehensible and metaphysical.
Long it has been only too manifest that, fondly habituated
though we be to it, the old structure will not do for modern
needs; and accordingly, under Descartes, Hobbes, Kant, and
others, repairs, alterations, and partial demolitions have been
carried on for the last three centuries. One system, also, stands
upon its own ground; I mean the new Schelling-Hegel mansion,
lately run up in the German taste, but with such oversights in
its construction that, although brand new, it is already
pronounced uninhabitable. The undertaking which this volume
inaugurates is to make a philosophy like that of Aristotle, that
is to say, to outline a theory so comprehensive that, for a long
time to come, the entire work of human reason, in philosophy
of every school and kind, in mathematics, in psychology, in
physical science, in history, in sociology, and in whatever other
department there may be, shall appear as the filling up of its
details. The first step toward this is to find simple concepts
applicable to every subject. **
  2. But before all else, let me make the acquaintance of my
reader, and express my sincere esteem for him and the deep
pleasure it is to me to address one so wise and so patient. I

  * 1 and 2 are from "A Guess at the Riddle" (c. 1898), see bk. III, ch. 3, # 1
note. 3-7 and 8-14 are two fragments, c. 1897.
  ** See 23ff. and book III.|p8

know his character pretty well, for both the subject and the
style of this book ensure his being one out of millions. He will
comprehend that it has not been written for the purpose of
confirming him in his preconceived opinions, and he would not
take the trouble to read it if it had. He is prepared to meet
with propositions that he is inclined at first to dissent from;
and he looks to being convinced that some of them are true,
after all. He will reflect, too, that the thinking and writing of
this book has taken, I won't say how long, quite certainly more
than a quarter of an hour, and consequently fundamental
objections of so obvious a nature that they must strike everyone
instantaneously will have occurred to the author, although the
replies to them may not be of that kind whose full force can be
instantly apprehended.
|p181

A GUESS AT THE RIDDLE*

   PLAN OF THE WORK

354. Section 1. One, Two, Three. Already written.
  Section 2. The triad in reasoning. Not touched. It is to
be made as follows. 1. Three kinds of signs; as best shown in
my last paper in the Am. Jour. Math. ** 2. Term, proposition,
and argument, mentioned in my paper on a new list of
categories. *** 3. Three kinds of argument, deduction, induction,
hypothesis, as shown in my paper in Studies in Logic. **** Also
three figures of syllogism, as shown there and in my paper on
the Classification of Arguments. ***** 4. Three kinds of terms,
absolute, relative, and conjugative, as shown in my first paper
on Logic of Relatives. ****** There are various other triads which
may be alluded to. The dual divisions of logic result from a
false way of looking at things absolutely. Thus, besides
affirmative and negative, there are really probable enunciations,
which are intermediate. So besides universal and particular
there are all sorts of propositions of numerical quantity. For
example, the particular proposition: Some A is B, means "At
least one A is B." But we can also say: At least 2 A's are B's.
Also, All the A's but one are B's, etc., etc., ad infinitum. We
pass from dual quantity, or a system of quantity such as that
of Boolian algebra, where there are only two values, to plural
quantity.

  * c. 1890. One of the drafts of this work is headed: "Notes for a Book,
to be entitled 'A Guess at the Riddle,' with a Vignette of the Sphynx below
the Title." This caption is followed by the remark, "And this book, if ever
written, as it soon will be if I am in a situation to do it, will be one of the
births of time."
  ** 3. 359ff.
  *** Ch. 6 below.
  **** Vol. 2, bk. III, ch. 8.
  ***** Vol. 2, bk.III, ch. 2.
  ****** Vol. 3, No. III.
|p182

  Section 3. The triad in metaphysics. This chapter, one of
the best, is to treat of the theory of cognition.
  Section 4. The triad in psychology. The greater part is
written.
  Section 5. The triad in physiology. The greater part is
written.
  Section 6. The triad in biology. This is to show the true
nature of the Darwinian hypothesis.
  Section 7. The triad in physics. The germinal section.
1. The necessity of a natural history of the laws of nature, so
that we may get some notion of what to expect. 2. The logical
postulate for explanation forbids the assumption of any
absolute. That is, it calls for the introduction of Thirdness. 3.
Metaphysics is an imitation of geometry; and mathematicians
having declared against axioms, the metaphysical axioms are
destined to fall too. 4. Absolute chance. 5. The universality
of the principle of habit. 6. The whole theory stated. 7.
Consequences.
  Section 8. The triad in sociology or, shall I say,
pneumatology. That the consciousness is a sort of public spirit among
the nerve-cells. Man as a community of cells; compound
animals and composite plants; society; nature. Feeling implied
in Firstness.
  Section 9. The triad in theology. Faith requires us to be
materialists without flinching.*

           # 1. TRICHOTOMY **

  355. Perhaps I might begin by noticing how different
numbers have found their champions. Two was extolled by Peter
Ramus, Four by Pythagoras, Five by Sir Thomas Browne, and
so on. For my part, I am a determined foe of no innocent
number; I respect and esteem them all in their several ways; but I
am forced to confess to a leaning to the number Three in
philosophy. In fact, I make so much use of threefold divisions
in my speculations, that it seems best to commence by making
a slight preliminary study of the conceptions upon which all
such divisions must rest. I mean no more than the ideas of

 * The last two sections do not seem to have been written.
 ** The sections of this book were originally called "chapters." There are a
number of alternative versions of this section. 1 and 2 of the preface, are from
one such alternative.
|p183

first, second, third -- ideas so broad that they may be looked
upon rather as moods or tones of thought, than as definite
notions, but which have great significance for all that. Viewed
as numerals, to be applied to what objects we like, they are
indeed thin skeletons of thought, if not mere words. If we only
wanted to make enumerations, it would be out of place to ask
for the significations of the numbers we should have to use; but
then the distinctions of philosophy are supposed to attempt
something far more than that; they are intended to go down to
the very essence of things, and if we are to make one single
threefold philosophical distinction, it behooves us to ask
beforehand what are the kinds of objects that are first, second, and
third, not as being so counted, but in their own true
characters. That there are such ideas of the really first, second,
and third, we shall presently find reason to admit.
  356. The first is that whose being is simply in itself, not
referring to anything nor lying behind anything. The second
is that which is what it is by force of something to which it is
second. The third is that which is what it is owing to things
between which it mediates and which it brings into relation to
each other.
  357. The idea of the absolutely first must be entirely
separated from all conception of or reference to anything else;
for what involves a second is itself a second to that second.
The first must therefore be present and immediate, so as not
to be second to a representation. It must be fresh and new,
for if old it is second to its former state. It must be initiative,
original, spontaneous, and free; otherwise it is second to a
determining cause. It is also something vivid and conscious;
so only it avoids being the object of some sensation. It
precedes all synthesis and all differentiation; it has no unity and
no parts. It cannot be articulately thought: assert it, and it
has already lost its characteristic innocence; for assertion
always implies a denial of something else. Stop to think of it,
and it has flown ! What the world was to Adam on the day he
opened his eyes to it, before he had drawn any distinctions, or
had become conscious of his own existence -- that is first,
present, immediate, fresh, new, initiative, original,
spontaneous, free, vivid, conscious, and evanescent. Only, remember
that every description of it must be false to it.
|p184

  358. Just as the first is not absolutely first if thought along
with a second, so likewise to think the second in its perfection
we must banish every third. The second is therefore the
absolute last. But we need not, and must not, banish the idea of
the first from the second; on the contrary, the second is
precisely that which cannot be without the first. It meets us in
such facts as another, relation, compulsion, effect, dependence,
independence, negation, occurrence, reality, result. A thing
cannot be other, negative, or independent, without a first to
or of which it shall be other, negative, or independent. Still,
this is not a very deep kind of secondness; for the first might
in these cases be destroyed yet leave the real character of the
second absolutely unchanged. When the second suffers some
change from the action of the first, and is dependent upon it,
the secondness is more genuine. But the dependence must not
go so far that the second is a mere accident or incident of the
first; otherwise the secondness again degenerates. The genuine
second suffers and yet resists, like dead matter, whose existence
consists in its inertia. Note, too, that for the second to have
the finality that we have seen belongs to it, it must be
determined by the first immovably, and thenceforth be fixed; so
that unalterable fixity becomes one of its attributes. We find
secondness in occurrence, because an occurrence is something
whose existence consists in our knocking up against it. A hard
fact is of the same sort; that is to say, it is something which is
there, and which I cannot think away, but am forced to
acknowledge as an object or second beside myself, the subject or
number one, and which forms material for the exercise of my will.
  The idea of second must be reckoned as an easy one to
comprehend. That of first is so tender that you cannot touch it
without spoiling it; but that of second is eminently hard and
tangible. It is very familiar, too; it is forced upon us daily; it
is the main lesson of life. In youth, the world is fresh and we
seem free; but limitation, confiict, constraint, and secondness
generally, make up the teaching of experience. With what
firstness
     "The scarfed bark puts from her native bay;"
with what secondness
                    "doth she return,
     With overweathered ribs and ragged sails."

|p185

But familiar as the notion is, and compelled as we are to
acknowledge it at every turn, still we never can realize it; we
never can be immediately conscious of fiiteness, or of
anything but a divine freedom that in its own original firstness
knows no bounds.
  359. First and second, agent and patient, yes and no, are
categories which enable us roughly to describe the facts of
experience, and they satisfy the mind for a very long time.
But at last they are found inadequate, and the third is the
conception which is then called for. The third is that which
bridges over the chasm between the absolute first and last,
and brings them into relationship. We are told that every
science has its qualitative and its quantitative stage; now its
qualitative stage is when dual distinctions -- whether a given
subject has a given predicate or not -- suffice; the quantitative
stage comes when, no longer content with such rough
distinctions, we require to insert a possible halfway between every
two possible conditions of the subject in regard to its possession
of the quality indicated by the predicate. Ancient mechanics
recognized forces as causes which produced motions as their
immediate effects, looking no further than the essentially dual
relation of cause and effect. That was why it could make no
progress with dynamics. The work of Galileo and his
successors lay in showing that forces are accelerations by which [a]
state of velocity is gradually brought about. The words "cause"
and "effect" still linger, but the old conceptions have been
dropped from mechanical philosophy; for the fact now known
is that in certain relative positions bodies undergo certain
accelerations. Now an acceleration, instead of being like a velocity
a relation between two successive positions, is a relation
between three; so that the new doctrine has consisted in the
suitable introduction of the conception of threeness. On this idea,
the whole of modern physics is built. The superiority of
modern geometry, too, has certainly been due to nothing so much
as to the bridging over of the innumerable distinct cases with
which the ancient science was encumbered; and we may go so
far as to say that all the great steps in the method of science in
every department have consisted in bringing into relation
cases previously discrete.
360. We can easily recognize the man whose thought is
|p186

mainly in the dual stage by his unmeasured use of language.
In former days, when he was natural, everything with him was
unmitigated, absolute, ineffable, utter, matchless, supreme,
unqualified, root and branch; but now that it is the fashion to
be depreciatory, he is just as plainly marked by the ridiculous
inadequacy of his expressions. The principle of contradiction
is a shibboleth for such minds; to disprove a proposition they
will always try to prove there lurks a contradiction in it,
notwithstanding that it may be as clear and comprehensible as
the day. Remark for your amusement the grand unconcern
with which mathematics, since the invention of the calculus,
has pursued its way, caring no more for the peppering of
contradiction-mongers than an ironclad for an American fort.
  361. We have seen that it is the immediate consciousness
that is preeminently first, the external dead thing that is
preeminently second. In like manner, it is evidently the
representation mediating between these two that is preeminently third.
Other examples, however, should not be neglected. The first
is agent, the second patient, the third is the action by which the
former infiuences the latter. Between the beginning as first, and
the end as last, comes the process which leads from first to last.
  362. According to the mathematicians, when we measure
along a line, were our yardstick replaced by a yard marked off
on an infinitely long rigid bar, then in all the shiftings of it
which we make for the purpose of applying it to successive
portions of the line to be measured, two points on that bar
would remain fixed and unmoved. To that pair of points, the
mathematicians accord the title of the absolute; they are the
points that are at an infinite distance one way and the other as
measured by that yard. These points are either really distinct,
coincident, or imaginary (in which case there is but a finite
distance completely round the line), according to the relation
of the mode of measurement to the nature of the line upon
which the measurement is made. These two points are the
absolute first and the absolute last or second, while every
measurable point on the line is of the nature of a third. We
have seen that the conception of the absolute first eludes every
attempt to grasp it; and so in another sense does that of the
absolute second; but there is no absolute third, for the third is
of its own nature relative, and this is what we are always thinking,
|p187

even when we aim at the first or second. The
starting-point of the universe, God the Creator, is the Absolute First;
the terminus of the universe, God completely revealed, is the
Absolute Second; every state of the universe at a measurable
point of time is the third. If you think the measurable is all
there is, and deny it any definite tendency whence or whither,
then you are considering the pair of points that makes the
absolute to be imaginary and are an Epicurean. If you hold
that there is a definite drift to the course of nature as a whole,
but yet believe its absolute end is nothing but the Nirvana
from which it set out, you make the two points of the absolute
to be coincident, and are a pessimist. But if your creed is that
the whole universe is approaching in the infinitely distant
future a state having a general character different from that
toward which we look back in the infinitely distant past, you
make the absolute to consist in two distinct real points and are
an evolutionist. * This is one of the matters conceming which
a man can only leam from his own reflections, but I believe
that if my suggestions are followed out, the reader will grant
that one, two, three, are more than mere count-words like
"eeny, meeny, miny, mo," but carry vast, though vague ideas.
  363. But it will be asked, why stop at three? Why not go
on to find a new conception in four, five, and so on indefinitely?
The reason is that while it is impossible to form a genuine three
by any modification of the pair, without introducing something
of a different nature from the unit and the pair, four, five, and
every higher number can be formed by mere complications of
threes. To make this clear, I will first show it in an example.
The fact that A presents B with a gift C, is a triple relation,
and as such cannot possibly be resolved into any combination
of dual relations. Indeed, the very idea of a combination
involves that of thirdness, for a combination is something
which is what it is owing to the parts which it brings into
mutual relationship. But we may waive that consideration,
and still we cannot build up the fact that A presents C to B by

  * The last view is essentially that of Christian theology, too. The theologians
hold the physical universe to be finite, but considering that universe which they
will admit to have existed from all time, it would appear to be in a different
condition in the end from what it was in the beginning, the whole spiritual creation
having been accomplished, and abiding.
|p188

any aggregate of dual relations between A and B, B and C, and
C and A. A may enrich B, B may receive C, and A may part
with C, and yet A need not necessarily give C to B. For that,
it would be necessary that these three dual relations should not
only coexist, but be welded into one fact. Thus we see that a
triad cannot be analyzed into dyads. But now I will show by
an example that a four can be analyzed into threes. Take the
quadruple fact that A sells C to B for the price D. This is a
compound of two facts: first, that A makes with C a certain
transaction, which we may name E; and second, that this
transaction E is a sale of B for the price D. Each of these two facts
is a triple fact, and their combination makes up [as] genuine
[a] quadruple fact as can be found. The explanation of this
striking difference is not far to seek. A dual relative term, such
as " lover" or " servant," is a sort of blank form, where there are
two places left blank. I mean that in building a sentence round
"lover," as the principal word of the predicate, we are at
liberty to make anything we see fit the subject, and then,
besides that, anything we please the object of the action of
loving. But a triple relative term such as "giver" has two
correlates, and is thus a blank form with three places left blank.
Consequently, we can take two of these triple relatives and fill
up one blank place in each with the same letter, X, which has
only the force of a pronoun or identifying index, and then the
two taken together will form a whole having four blank places;
and from that we can go on in a similar way to any higher
number. But when we attempt to imitate this proceeding with
dual relatives, and combine two of them by means of an X, we
find we only have two blank places in the combination, just as
we had in either of the relatives taken by itself. A road with
only three-way forkings may have any number of termini, but
no number of straight roads put end on end will give more than
two termini. Thus any number, however large, can be built
out of triads; and consequently no idea can be involved in such
a number, radically different from the idea of three. I do not
mean to deny that the higher numbers may present interesting
special configurations from which notions may be derived of
more or less general applicability; but these cannot rise to the
height of philosophical categories so fundamental as those that
have been considered.
|p189

  364. The argument of this book has been developed in the
mind of the author, substantially as it is presented, as a
following out of these three conceptions, in a sort of game of
"follow-my-leader" from one field of thought into another.
Their importance was originally brought home to me in the
study of logic, where they play so remarkable a part that I was
led to look for them in psychology. Finding them there again,
I could not help asking myself whether they did not enter into
the physiology of the nervous system. By drawing a little on
hypothesis, I succeeded in detecting them there; and then the
question naturally came how they would appear in the theory
of protoplasm in general. Here I seemed to break into an
interesting avenue of reflections giving instructive aper‡us
both into the nature of protoplasm and into the conceptions
themselves; though it was not till later that I mapped out my
thoughts on the subject as they are presented in Section 4.
I had no difficulty in following the lead into the domain of
natural selection; and once arrived at that point, I was
irresistibly carried on to speculations concerning physics. One bold
saltus landed me in a garden of fruitful and beautiful
suggestions, the exploration of which long prevented my looking
further. As soon, however, as I was induced to look further,
and to examine the application of the three ideas to the deepest
problems of the soul, nature, and God, I saw at once that they
must carry me far into the heart of those primeval mysteries.
That is the way the book has grown in my mind: it is also the
order in which I have written it; and only this first chapter is
more or less an afterthought, since at an earlier stage of my
studies I should have looked upon the matter here set down as
too vague to have any value. I should have discerned in it
too strong a resemblance to many a crack-brained book that
I had laughed over. A deeper study has taught me that even
out of the mouths of babes and sucklings strength may be
brought forth, and that weak metaphysical trash has
sometimes contained the germs of conceptions capable of growing
up into important and positive doctrines.
  365. Thus, the whole book being nothing but a continual
exemplification of the triad of ideas, we need linger no longer
upon this preliminary exposition of them. There is, however,
one feature of them upon which it is quite indispensable to
|p190

dwell. It is that there are two distinct grades of Secondness
and three grades of Thirdness. There is a close analogy to this
in geometry. Conic sections are either the curves usually so
called, or they are pairs of straight lines. A pair of straight
lines is called a degenerate conic. So plane cubic curves are
either the genuine curves of the third order, or they are conics
paired with straight lines, or they consist of three straight
lines; so that there are the two orders of degenerate cubics.
Nearly in this same way, besides genuine Secondness, there is a
degenerate sort which does not exist as such, but is only so
conceived. The medieval logicians (following a hint of
Aristotle) distinguished between real relations and relations of
reason. A real relation subsists in virtue of a fact which would
be totally impossible were either of the related objects destroyed;
while a relation of reason subsists in virtue of two facts, one
only of which would disappear on the annihilation of either of
the relates. Such are all resemblances: for any two objects in
nature resemble each other, and indeed in themselves just as
much as any other two; it is only with reference to our senses
and needs that one resemblance counts for more than another.
Rumford and Franklin resembled each other by virtue of being
botk Americans; but either would have been just as much an
American if the other had never lived. On the other hand, the
fact that Cain killed Abel cannot be stated as a mere aggregate
of two facts, one concerning Cain and the other concerning
Abel. Resemblances are not the only relations of reason, though
they have that character in an eminent degree. Contrasts and
comparisons are of the same sort. Resemblance is an identity
of characters; and this is the same as to say that the mind
gathers the resembling ideas together into one conception.
Other relations of reason arise from ideas being connected by
the mind in other ways; they consist in the relation between
two parts of one complex concept, or, as we may say, in the
relation of a complex concept to itself, in respect to two of its
parts. This brings us to consider a sort of degenerate
Secondness that does not fulfill the definition of a relation of reason.
Identity is the relation that everything bears to itself: Lucullus
dines with Lucullus. Again, we speak of allurements and
motives in the language of forces, as though a man suffered
compulsion from within. So with the voice of conscience: and
|p191

we observe our own feelings by a reflective sense. An echo is
my own voice coming back to answer itself. So also, we speak
of the abstract quality of a thing as if it were some second
thing that the first thing possesses. But the relations of reason
and these self-relations are alike in this, that they arise from
the mind setting one part of a notion into relation to another.
All degenerate seconds may be conveniently termed internal,
in contrast to external seconds, which are constituted by
external fact, and are true actions of one thing upon another.
  366. Among thirds, there are two degrees of degeneracy.
The first is where there is in the fact itself no Thirdness or
mediation, but where there is true duality; the second degree is
where there is not even true Secondness in the fact itself.
Consider, first, the thirds degenerate in the first degree. A pin
fastens two things together by sticking through one and also
through the other: either might be annihilated, and the pin
would continue to stick through the one which remained. A
mixture brings its ingredients together by containing each.
We may term these accidental thirds. "How did I slay thy
son?" asked the merchant, and the jinnee replied, "When thou
threwest away the date-stone, it smote my son, who was passing
at the time, on the breast, and he died forthright." Here there
were two independent facts, first that the merchant threw
away the date-stone, and second that the date-stone struck
and killed the jinnee's son. Had it been aimed at him, the case
would have been different; for then there would have been a
relation of aiming which would have connected together the
aimer, the thing aimed, and the object aimed at, in one fact.
What monstrous injustice and inhumanity on the part of that
jinnee to hold that poor merchant responsible for such an
accident ! I remember how I wept at it, as I lay in my father's
arms and he first told me the story. It is certainly just that a
man, even though he had no evil intention, should be held
responsible for the immediate effects of his actions; but not for
such as might result from them in a sporadic case here and
there, but only for such as might have been guarded against by
a reasonable rule of prudence. Nature herself often supplies
the place of the intention of a rational agent in making a
Thirdness genuine and not merely accidental; as when a spark,
as third, falling into a barrel of gunpowder, as first, causes an
|p192

explosion, as second. But how does nature do this? By virtue
of an intelligible law according to which she acts. If two forces
are combined according to the parallelogram of forces, their
resultant is a real third. Yet any force may, by the
parallelogram of forces, be mathematically resolved into the sum of
two others, in an infinity of different ways. Such components,
however, are mere creations of the mind. What is the
difference? As far as one isolated event goes, there is none; the
real forces are no more present in the resultant than any
components that the mathematician may imagine. But what
makes the real forces really there is the general law of nature
which calls for them, and not for any other components of the
resultant. Thus, intelligibility, or reason objectified, is what
makes Thirdness genuine.
  367. We now come to thirds degenerate in the second
degree. The dramatist Marlowe had something of that
character of diction in which Shakespeare and Bacon agree. This
is a trivial example; but the mode of relation is important. In
natural history, intermediate types serve to bring out the
resemblance between forms whose similarity might otherwise
escape attention, or not be duly appreciated. In portraiture,
photographs mediate between the original and the likeness.
In science, a diagram or analogue of the observed fact leads on
to a further analogy. The relations of reason which go to the
formation of such a triple relation need not be all resemblances.
Washington was eminently free from the faults in which most
great soldiers resemble one another. A centaur is a mixture of
a man and a horse. Philadelphia lies between New York and
Washington. Such thirds may be called intermediate thirds
or thirds of comparison.
  368. Nobody will suppose that I wish to claim any
originality in reckoning the triad important in philosophy. Since
Hegel, almost every fanciful thinker has done the same.
Originality is the last of recommendations for fundamental
conceptions. On the contrary, the fact that the minds of men
have ever been inclined to threefold divisions is one of the
considerations in favor of them. Other numbers have been
objects of predilection to this philosopher and that, but three
has been prominent at all times and with all schools. My whole
method will be found to be in profound contrast with that of

|p193

Hegel; I reject his philosophy in toto. Nevertheless, I have a
certain sympathy with it, and fancy that if its author had only
noticed a very few circumstances he would himself have been
led to revolutionize his system. One of these is the double
division or dichotomy of the second idea of the triad. He has
usually overlooked external Secondness, altogether. In other
words, he has committed the trifiing oversight of forgetting
that there is a real world with real actions and reactions.
Rather a serious oversight that. Then Hegel had the
misfortune to be unusually deficient in mathematics. He shows
this in the very elementary character of his reasoning. Worse
still, while the whole burden of his song is that philosophers
have neglected to take Thirdness into account, which is true
enough of the theological kind, with whom alone he was
acquainted (for I do not call it acquaintance to look into a
book without comprehending it), he unfortunately did not
know, what it would have been of the utmost consequence for
him to know, that the mathematical analysts had in great
measure escaped this great fault, and that the thorough-going
pursuit of the ideas and methods of the differential calculus
would be sure to cure it altogether. Hegel's dialectical method
is only a feeble and rudimentary application of the principles
of the calculus to metaphysics. Finally Hegel's plan of
evolving everything out of the abstractest conception by a
dialectical procedure, though far from being so absurd as the
experientialists think, but on the contrary representing one of
the indispensable parts of the course of science, overlooks the
weakness of individual man, who wants the strength to wield
such a weapon as that.
|p197

     # 3. THE TRIAD IN METAPHYSICS

  373. I will run over all the conceptions that played an
important part in the pre-Socratic philosophy and see how far
they can be expressed in terms of one, two, three.
  1. The first of all the conceptions of philosophy is that of
a primal matter out of which the world is made. Thales and
the early Ionian philosophers busied themselves mainly with
this. They called it the {...}, the beginning; so that the
conception of first was the quintessence of it. Nature was a
wonder to them, and they asked its explanation; from what
did it come? That was a good question, but it was rather
stupid to suppose that they were going to learn much even if
they could find out from what sort of matter it was made.
But to ask how it had been formed, as they doubtless did, was
not an exhaustive question; it would only carry them back a
little way. They wished to go to the very beginning at once,
and in the beginning there must have been a homogeneous
something, for where there was variety they supposed there
must be always an explanation to be sought. The first must
be indeterminate, and the indeterminate first of anything is
the material of which it is formed. Besides, their idea was that
they could not tell how the world was formed unless they knew
from what to begin their account. The inductive [method] of
explaining phenomena by tracing them back step by step to
their causes was foreign not only to them but to all ancient
and medieval philosophy; that is the Baconian idea.
Indeterminacy is really a character of the first. But not the
indeterminacy of homogeneity. The first is full of life and
variety. Yet that variety is only potential; it is not definitely
there. Still, the notion of explaining the variety of the world,
which was what they mainly wondered at, by non-variety was
quite absurd. How is variety to come out of the womb of
homogeneity; only by a principle of spontaneity, which is just
that virtual variety that is the first.*

     # 4. THE TRIAD IN PSYCHOLOGY **

  374. The line of reasoning which I propose to pursue is
peculiar and will need some careful study to estimate the
  * No more of this section seems to have been written; but see vol. 6.
  ** Cf. vol. 8.
|p198

strength of it. I shall review it critically in the last section, but
meantime I desire to point out that the step I am about to
take, which is analogous to others that will follow, is not so
purely of the nature of a guess as might be supposed by
persons expert in judging of scientific evidence. We have seen
that the ideas of one, two, three, are forced upon us in logic,
and really cannot be dispensed with. They meet us not once
but at every tum. And we have found reason to think
that they are equally important in metaphysics. How is the
extraordinary prominence of these conceptions to be explained?
Must it not be that they have their origin in the nature of the
mind? This is the Kantian form of inference, which has been
found so cogent in the hands of that hero of philosophy; and I
do not know that modern studies have done anything to
discredit it. It is true we no longer regard such a psychological
explanation of a conception to be as final as Kant thought. It
leaves further questions to be asked; but as far as it goes it
seems to be satisfactory. We find the ideas of first, second,
third, constant ingredients of our knowledge. It must then
either be that they are continually given to us in the
presentations of sense, or that it is the peculiar nature of the mind to
mix them with our thoughts. Now we certainly cannot think
that these ideas are given in sense. First, second, and third
are not sensations. They can only be given in sense by things
appearing labelled as first, second, and third, and such labels
things do not usually bear. They ought therefore to have a
psychological origin. A man must be a very uncompromising
partisan of the theory of the tabula rasa to deny that the ideas
of first, second, and third are due to congenital tendencies of
the mind. So far there is nothing in my argument to
distinguish it from that of many a Kantian. The noticeable thing
is that I do not rest here, but seek to put the conclusion to the
test by an independent examination of the facts of psychology,
to see whether we can find any traces of the existence of three
parts or faculties of the soul or modes of consciousness, which
might confirm the result just reached.
  375. Now, three departments of the mind have been
generally recognized since Kant; they are: Feeling [of pleasure and
pain], Knowing, and Willing. The unanimity with which this
trisection of the mind has been accepted is, indeed, quite surprising.|p199

The division did not have its genesis in the peculiar
ideas of Kant. On the contrary, it was borrowed by him from
dogmatic philosophers, and his acceptance of it was, as has
been well remarked, a concession to dogmatism. It has been
allowed even by psychologists to whose general doctrines it
seems positively hostile.*
  379.... We remember it [sensation]; that is to say, we have
another cognition which professes to reproduce it; but we know
that there is no resemblance between the memory and the
sensation, because, in the first place, nothing can resemble an
immediate feeling, for resemblance supposes a dismemberment
and recomposition which is totally foreign to the immediate,
and in the second place, memory is an articulated complex and
worked-over product which differs infinitely and
immeasurably from feeling. Look at a red surface, and try to feel what
the sensation is, and then shut your eyes and remember it.
No doubt different persons are different in this respect; to
some the experiment will seem to yield an opposite result, but
I have convinced myself that there is nothing in my memory
that is in the least like the vision of the red. When red is not
before my eyes, I do not see it at all. Some people tell me they
see it faintly -- a most inconvenient kind of memory, which
would lead to remembering bright red as pale or dingy. I
remember colors with unusual accuracy, because I have had
much training in observing them; but my memory does not
consist in any vision but in a habit by virtue of which I can
recognize a newly presented color as like or unlike one I had

|p201

seen before. But even if the memory of some persons is of the
nature of an hallucination, enough arguments remain to show
that immediate consciousness or feeling is absolutely unlike
anything else.
  380. There are grave objections to making a whole third
of the mind of the will alone. One great psychologist has said
that the will is nothing but the strongest desire. I cannot
grant that; it seems to me to overlook that fact which of all
that we observe is quite the most obtrusive, namely, the
difference between dreaming and doing. This is not a question
of defining, but of noticing what we experience; and surely he
who can confound desiring with doing must be a day-dreamer.
The evidence, however, seems to be pretty strong that the
consciousness of willing does not differ, at least not very much,
from a sensation. The sense of hitting and of getting hit are
nearly the same, and should be classed together. The common
element is the sense of an actual occurrence, of actual action
and reaction. There is an intense reality about this kind of
experience, a sharp sundering of subject and object. While I
am seated calmly in the dark, the lights are suddenly turned
on, and at that instant I am conscious, not of a process of
change, but yet of something more than can be contained in an
instant. I have a sense of a saltus, of there being two sides to
that instant. A consciousness of polarity would be a tolerably
good phrase to describe what occurs. For will, then, as one of
the great types of consciousness, we ought to substitute the
polar sense.
  381. But by far the most confused of the three members of
the division, in its ordinary statement, is Cognition. In the
first place every kind of consciousness enters into cognition.
Feelings, in the sense in which alone they can be admitted as a
great branch of mental phenomena, form the warp and woof of
cognition, and even in the objectionable sense of pleasure and
pain, they are constituents of cognition. The will, in the form
of attention, constantly enters, and the sense of reality or
objectivity, which is what we have found ought to take the
place of will, in the division of consciousness, is even more
essential yet, if possible. But that element of cognition which
is neither feeling nor the polar sense, is the consciousness of a
process, and this in the form of the sense of learning, of acquiring,

|p202


of mental growth is eminently characteristic of cognition.
This is a kind of consciousness which cannot be immediate,
because it covers a time, and that not merely because it
continues through every instant of that time, but because it
cannot be contracted into an instant. It differs from immediate
consciousness, as a melody does from one prolonged note.
Neither can the consciousness of the two sides of an instant, of
a sudden occurrence, in its individual reality, possibly embrace
the consciousness of a process. This is the consciousness that
binds our life together. It is the consciousness of synthesis.
  382. Here then, we have indubitably three radically
different elements of consciousness, these and no more. And they
are evidently connected with the ideas of one-two-three.
Immediate feeling is the consciousness of the first; the polar sense is
the consciousness of the second; and synthetical consciousness
is the consciousness of a third or medium.
  383. Note, too, that just as we have seen that there are
two orders of Secondness, so the polar sense splits into two,
and that in two ways, for first, there is an active and a passive
kind, or will and sense, and second, there are external will and
sense, in opposition to internal will (self-control, inhibiiory
will) and internal sense (introspection). In like manner, just as
there are three orders of Thirdness, so there are three kinds
of synthetical consciousness. The undegenerate and really
typical form has not been made so familiar to us as the others,
which have been more completely studied by psychologists; I
shall therefore mention that last. Synthetical consciousness
degenerate in the first degree, corresponding to accidental
Thirdness, is where there is an external compulsion upon us to
think things together. Association by contiguity is an instance
of this; but a still better instance is that in our first
apprehension of our experiences, we cannot choose how we will arrange
our ideas in reference to time and space, but are compelled to
think certain things as nearer together than others. It would be
putting the cart before the horse to say that we are compelled
to think certain things together because they are together in
time and space; the true way of stating it is that there is an
exterior compulsion upon us to put them together in our
construction of time and space, in our perspective. Synthetical
consciousness, degenerate in the second degree, corresponding
|p203

to intermediate thirds, is where we think different feelings to be
alike or different, which, since feelings in themselves cannot be
compared and therefore cannot be alike, so that to say they are
alike is merely to say that the synthetical consciousness regards
them so, comes to this, that we are intemally compelled to
synthesize them or to sunder them. This kind of synthesis appears
in a secondary form in association by resemblance. But the
highest kind of synthesis is what the mind is compelled to make
neither by the inward attractions of the feelings or
representations themselves, nor by a transcendental force of necessity, but
in the interest of intelligibility that is, in the interest of the
synthesizing "I think" itself; and this it does by introducing an
idea not contained in the data, which gives connections which
they would not otherwise have had. This kind of synthesis
has not been sufficiently studied, and especially the intimate
relationship of its different varieties has not been duly
considered. The work of the poet or novelist is not so utterly
different from that of the scientific man. The artist introduces
a fiction; but it is not an arbitrary one; it exhibits affinities to
which the mind accords a certain approval in pronouncing
them beautiful, which if it is not exactly the same as saying
that the synthesis is true, is something of the same general
kind. The geometer draws a diagram, which if not exactly a
fiction, is at least a creation, and by means of observation
of that diagram he is able to synthesize and show relations
between elements which before seemed to have no necessary
connection. The realities compel us to put some things into
very close relation and others less so, in a highly complicated,
and in the [to?] sense itself unintelligible manner; but it is the
genius of the rnind, that takes up all these hints of sense, adds
immensely to them, makes them precise, and shows them in
intelligible form in the intuitions of space and time. Intuition
is the regarding of the abstract in a concrete form, by the
realistic hypostatization of relations; that is the one sole method
of valuable thought. Very shallow is the prevalent notion that
this is something to be avoided. You might as well say at once
that reasoning is to be avoided because it has led to so much
error; quite in the same philistine line of thought would that
be; and so well in accord with the spirit of nominalism that I
wonder some one does not put it forward. The true precept is
|p204


not to abstain from hypostatization, but to do it
intelligently. ...*
  384. Kant gives the erroneous view that ideas are
presented separated and then thought together by the mind.
This is his doctrine that a mental synthesis precedes every
analysis. What really happens is that something is presented
which in itself has no parts, but which nevertheless is analyzed
by the mind, that is to say, its having parts consists in this,
that the mind afterward recognizes those parts in it. Those
partial ideas are really not in the first idea, in itself, though
they are separated out from it. It is a case of destructive
distillation. When, having thus separated them, we think over
them, we are carried in spite of ourselves from one thought to
another, and therein lies the first real synthesis. An earlier
synthesis than that is a fiction. The whole conception of time
belongs to genuine synthesis and is not to be considered under
this head.

     # 5. THE TRIAD IN PHYSIOLOGY

  385. Granted that there are three fundamentally different
kinds of consciousness, it follows as a matter of course that
there must be something threefold in the physiology of the
nervous system to account for them. No materialism is implied
in this, further than that intimate dependence of the action of
the mind upon the body, which every student of the subject
must and does now acknowledge. Once more a prediction, as
it were, is made by the theory; that is to say, certain
consequences, not contemplated in the construction thereof,
necessarily result from it; and these are of such a character that their
truth or falsehood can be independently investigated. Were
we to find them strikingly and certainly true, a remarkable
confirmation of the theory would be afforded. So much as
this, however, I cannot promise; I can only say that they are
not certainly false; and we must be content to trace out these
consequences, and see what they are, and leave them to the
future judgment of physiologists.
  386. Two of the three kinds of consciousness, indeed, the
simple and dual, receive an instant physiological explanation.
We know that the protoplasmic content of every nerve-cell has

 * Some manuscript pages seem to be missing here.
|p205

its active and passive conditions, and argument is unnecessary
to show that feeling, or immediate consciousness, arises in an
active state of nerve-cells. Experiments on the effects of
cutting the nerves show that there is no feeling after
communication with the central nerve-cells is severed, so that the
phenomenon has certainly some connection with the nerve-cells;
and feeling is excited by just such stimuli as would be likely to
throw protoplasm into an active condition. Thus, though we
cannot say that every nerve-cell in its active condition has
feeling (which we cannot deny, however) there is scarce room
to doubt that the activity of nerve-cells is the main
physiological requisite for consciousness. On the other hand, the
sense of action and reaction, or the polar sense, as we agreed to
call it, is plainly connected with the discharge of nervous
energy through the nerve-fibres. External volition, the most
typical case of it, involves such a discharge into muscle cells.
In external sensation, where the polar sense enters in a lower
intensity, there is a discharge from the terminal nerve-cell
through the afferent nerve upon a cell or cells in the brain. In
intemal volition, or self-control, there is some inhibitory action
of the nerves, which is also known to involve the movement of
nervous force; and in internal observation, or visceral
sensation, there are doubtless transfers of energy from one central
cell to another. Remembering that the polar sense is the sense
of the difference between what was before and what is after a
dividing instant, or the sense of an instant as having sides, we
see clearly that the physiological concomitant of it must be
some event which happens very quickly and leaves a more
abiding effect, and this description suits the passage of a
nervous discharge over a nerve-fibre so perfectly, that I do not
think we need hesitate to set this phenomenon down as the
condition of dual consciousness.
  387. Synthetical consciousness offers a more difficult
problem. Yet the explanation of the genuine form of that con
sciousness, the sense of learning, is easy enough; it is only the
degenerate modes, the sense of sirnilarity, and the sense of real
connection, which oblige us to hesitate. With regard to these
two degenerate forms, I am driven to make hypotheses.
  388. When two ideas resemble one another, we say that
they have something in common; part of the one is said to be
|p206


identical with a part of the other. In what does that identity
consist? Having closed both eyes, I open first one and then
shut it and open the other, and I say that the two sensations
are alike. How can the impressions of two nerves be judged to
be alike? It appears to me that in order that that should
become possible, the two nerve-cells must probably discharge
themselves into one common nerve-cell. In any case, it seems
to me that the first supposition to make, for scientific
observation to confimm or reject, is that two ideas are alike so far as
the same nerve-cells have been concemed in the production of
them. In short, the hypothesis is that resemblance consists in
the identity of a common element, and that that identity lies
in a part of the one idea and a part of the other idea being the
feeling peculiar to the excitation of one or more nerve-cells.
  389. When we find ourselves under a compulsion to think
that two elements of experience which do not particularly
resemble one another are, nevertheless, really connected, that
connection must, I think, be due in some way to a discharge
of nerve-energy; for the whole sense of reality is a
determination of polar consciousness, which is itself due to such dis
charges. For example, I recognize that a certain surface on
one side of a certain boundary is red, and on the other side is
blue; or that any two qualities are immediately contiguous in
space or time. If the contiguity is in time, it is by the polar
sense directly that we are conscious of a dividing instant with
its difference on the two sides. If the contiguity is in space, I
think we have at first a completely confused feeling of the
whole, as yet unanalyzed and unsynthesized, but afterward,
when the analysis has been made, we find ourselves compelled,
in recomposing the elements, to pass directly from what is on
one side of the boundary to what is on the other. I suppose
then that we are compelled to think the two feelings as
contiguous because the nerve-cell whose excitation produces the
feeling of one recalled sensation discharges itself into the
nervecell whose excitation makes the feeling of the other recalled
sensation.
  390. The genuine synthetic consciousness, or the sense of
the process of learning, which is the preeminent ingredient and
quintessence of the reason, has its physiological basis quite
evidently in the most characteristic property of the nervous
|p207

system, the power of taking habits. This depends on five
principles, as follows. First, when a stimulus or irritation is
continued for some time, the excitation spreads from the cells
directly affected to those that are associated with it, and from
those to others, and so on, and at the same time increases in
intensity. Second, after a time fatigue begins to set in. Now
besides the utter fatigue which consists in the cell's losing all
excitability, and the nervous system refusing to react to the
stimulus at all, there is a gentler fatigue, which plays a very
important part in adapting the brain to serving as an organ of
reason, this form of fatigue consisting in the reflex action or
discharge of the nerve-cell ceasing to go on one path and either
beginning on a path where there had been no discharge, or
increasing the intensity of the discharge along a path on which
there had been previously only a slight discharge. For example,
one may sometimes see a frog whose cerebrum or brain has
been removed, and whose hind leg has been irritated by
putting a drop of acid upon it, after repeatedly rubbing the place
with the other foot, as if to wipe off the acid, may at length be
observed to give several hops, the first avenue of nervous
discharge having become fatigued. Third, when, from any cause
the stimulus to a nerve-cell is removed, the excitation quickly
subsides. That it does not do so instantly is well known, and
the phenomenon goes among physicists by the name of
persistence of sensation. All noticeable feeling subsides in a
fraction of a second, but a very small remnant continues for a
much longer time. Fourth, if the same cell which was once
excited, and which by some chance had happened to discharge
itself along a certain path or paths, comes to get excited a
second time, it is more likely to discharge itself the second time
along some or all of those paths along which it had previously
discharged itself than it would have been had it not so
discharged itself before. This is the central principle of habit;
and the striking contrast of its modality to that of any
mechanical law is most significant. The laws of physics know nothing
of tendencies or probabilities; whatever they require at all
they require absolutely and without fail, and they are never
disobeyed. Were the tendency to take habits replaced by an
absolute requirement that the cell should discharge itself
always in the same way, or according to any rigidly fixed condition|p208

whatever, all possibility of habit developing into
intelligence would be cut off at the outset; the virtue of Thirdness
would be absent. It is essential that there should be an element
of chance in some sense as to how the cell shall discharge
itself; and then that this chance or uncertainty shall not be
entirely obliterated by the principle of habit, but only
somewhat affected. Fifth, when a considerable time has elapsed
without a nerve having reacted in any particular way, there
comes in a principle of forgetfulness or negative habit rendering
it the less likely to react in that way. Now let us see what will
be the result of these five principles taken in combination.
When a nerve is stimulated, if the reflex activity is not at first
of the right sort to remove the source of irritation, it will
change its character again and again until the cause of
irritation is removed, when the activity will quickly subside. When
the nerve comes to be stimulated a second time in the same
way, probably some of the other movements which had been
made on the first occasion will be repeated; but, however this
may be, one of them must ultimately be repeated, for the
activity will continue until this does happen, I mean that
movement which removes the source of irritation. On a third
occasion, the process of forgetfulness will have been begun in regard
to any tendency to repeat any of the actions of the first
occasion which were not repeated on the second. Of those which
were repeated, some will probably be repeated again, and some
not; but always there remains that one which must be repeated
before the activity comes to an end. The ultimate effect of
this will inevitably be that a habit gets established of at once
reacting in the way which removes the source of irritation; for
this habit alone will be strengthened at each repetition of the
experiment, while every other will tend to become weakened
at an accelerated rate.
  391. I have invented a little game or experiment with
playing cards to illustrate the working of these principles; and
I can promise the reader that if he will try it half a dozen times
he will be better able to estimate the value of the account of
habit here proposed. The rules of this game are as follows:
take a good many cards of four suits, say a pack of fifty-two,
though fewer will do. The four suits are supposed to
represent four modes in which a cell may react. Let one suit, say
|p209

spades, represent that mode of reaction which removes the
source of irritation and brings the activity to an end. In order
readily to find a card of any suit as wanted, you had better
lay all the cards down face up and distribute into four packets,
each containing the cards of one suit only. Now take two
spades, two diamonds, two clubs, and two hearts, to represent
the original disposition of the nerve-cell, which is supposed to
be equally likely to react in any of the four ways. You turn
these eight cards face down and shuffle them with extreme
thoroughness. * Then turn up cards from the top of this pack,
one by one until a spade is reached. This process represents
the reaction of the cell. Take up the cards just dealt off, and
add to the pack held in the hand one card of each of those suits
that have just been turned up (for habit) and remove from the
pack one card of each suit not turned up (for forgetfulness).
Shuffle, and go through with this operation thirteen times or
until the spades are exhausted. It will then generally be found
that you hold nothing but spades in your hand.
  392. Thus we see how these principles not only lead to the
establishment of habits, but to habits directed to definite ends,
namely the removal of sources of irritation. Now it is precisely
action according to final causes which distinguishes mental
from mechanical action; and the general formula of all our
desires may be taken as this: to remove a stimulus. Every man
is busily working to bring to an end that state of things which
now excites him to work.
  393. But we are led yet deeper into physiology. The three
fundamental functions of the nervous system, namely, first,
the excitation of cells; second, the transfer of excitation over
fibres; third, the fixing of definite tendencies under the
influence of habit, are plainly due to three properties of the
protoplasm or life-slime itself. Protoplasm has its active and its
passive condition, its active state is transferred from one part
of it to another, and it also exhibits the phenomena of habit.

  * Cards are almost never shuffled enough to illustrate fairly the principles of
probabilities; but if after being shuffled in any of the usual ways, they are dealt
into three packs and taken up again, and then passed from one hand into the
other one by one, every other one going to the top and every other to the bottom
of the pack that thus accumulates in the second hand, and finally cut, the
shuffling may be considered as sumcient for the purpose of this game. Whenever the
direction is to shuffle, shuffling as thorough as this is meant.
|p210

But these three facts do not seem to sum up the main
properties of protoplasm, as our theory would lead us to expect
them to do. Still, this may be because the nature of this
strange substance is so little understood; and if we had the
true secret of its constitution we might see that qualities that
now appear unrelated really group themselves into one, so
that it may be after all that it accords with our theory better
than it seems to do. There have been at least two attempts to
explain the properties of protoplasm by means of chemical
suppositions; but inasmuch as chemical forces are as far as
possible themselves from being understood, such hypotheses,
even if they were known to be correct, would be of little avail.
As for what a physicist would understand by a molecular
explanation of protoplasm, such a thing seems hardly to have
been thought of; yet I cannot see that it is any more difficult
than the constitution of inorganic matter. The properties of
protoplasm are enumerated as follows: contractility,
irritability, automatism, nutrition, metabolism, respiration, and
reproduction; but these can all be summed up under the heads
of sensibility, motion, and growth. These three properties are
respectively first, second, and third. Let us, however, draw
up a brief statement of the facts which a molecular theory of
protoplasm would have to account for. In the first place, then,
protoplasm is a definite chemical substance, or class of
substances, recognizable by its characteristic relations. "We do
not at present," says Dr. Michael Foster* (1879), "know
anything definite about the molecular composition of active living
protoplasm; but it is more than probable that its molecule is a
large and complex one in which a proteid substance is peculiarly
associated with a complex fat and with some representative of
the carbohydrate group, i.e., that each molecule of protoplasm
contains residues of each of these three great classes. The
whole animal body is modified protoplasm." The chemical
complexity of the protoplasm molecule must be amazing. A
proteid is only one of its constituents, and doubtless very much
simpler. Yet chemists do not attempt to infer from their
analyses the ultimate atomic constitution of any of the
proteids, the number of atoms entering into them being so great
as almost to nullify the law of multiple proportions. I do find

 * The editors have been unable to locate this quotation.
|p211

in the book just quoted the following formula for nuclein, a
substance allied to the proteids. It is C29H49N9P3O22. But as
the sum of the numbers of atoms of hydrogen, nitrogen, and
phosphorus ought to be even, this formula must be multiplied
by some even number; so that the number of atoms in nuclein
must be two hundred and twenty-four at the very least. We
can hardly imagine, then, that the number of atoms in
protoplasm is much less than a thousand, and if one considers the
very minute proportions of some necessary ingredients of
animal and vegetable organisms, one is somewhat tempted to
suspect that fifty thousand might do better, or even come to be
looked upon in the future as a ridiculously small guess.
Protoplasm combines with water in all proportions, the mode of
combination being apparently intermediate between solution
and mechanical mixture. According to the amount of water it
contains, it passes from being brittle to being pliable, then
gelatinous, then slimy, then liquid. Generally, it has the
character of being elastico-viscous; that is to say, it springs back
partially after a long strain, and wholly after a short one; but
its viscosity is much more marked than its elasticity. It is
generally full of granules, by which we can see slow streaming
motions in it, continuing for some minutes in one way and then
generally reversed. The effect of this streaming is to cause
protuberances in the mass, often very long and slender. They
occasionally stick up against gravity; and their various forms
are characteristic of the different kinds of protoplasm. When
a mass of it is disturbed by a jar, a poke, an electric shock, heat,
etc., the streams are arrested and the whole contracts into a
ball; or if it were very much elongated, sometimes breaks up
into separate spheres. When the external excitation is removed,
the mass sinks down into something like its former condition.
Protoplasm also grows; it absorbs material and converts it into
the like of its own substance; and in all its growth and
reproduction, it preserves its specific characters.
  394. Such are the properties that have to be accounted for.
What first arrests our attention, as likely to afford the key to
the problem, is the contraction of the mass of protoplasm on
being disturbed. This is obviously due to a vast and sudden
increase of what the physicists call "surface tension," or the
pulling together of the outer parts, which phenomenon is
always observed in liquids, and is the cause of their making
|p212 

drops. This surface tension is due to the cohesion, or
attraction between neighboring molecules. The question is, then
how can a body, on having its equilibrium deranged, suddenly
increase the attractions between its neighboring molecules?
These attractions must increase rapidly as the distance is
diminished; and thus the answer suggests itself that the
distance between neighboring molecules is diminished. True, the
average distance must remain nearly the same, but if the
distances which had previously been nearly equal are rendered
unequal, the attractions between the molecules that are brought
nearer to one another will be much more increased than those
between those that are removed from one another will be
diminished. We are thus led to the supposition that in the
ordinary state of the substance, its particles are moving for the
most part in complicated orbital or quasi-orbital systems,
instead of in the chemical molecules or more definite systems
of atoms of less complex substances, these particles thus
moving in orbits not being, however, atoms, but chemical
molecules. But we must suppose that the forces between these
particles are just barely sufficient to hold them in their orbits
and that in fact, as long as the protoplasm is in an active
condition, they are not all so held, but that one and another get
occasionally thrown out of their orbits and wander about until
they are drawn in to some other system. We must suppose
that these systems have some approximate composition, about
so many of one kind of particles and so many of another kind,
etc., entering into them. This is necessary to account for the
nearly constant chemical composition of the whole. On the
other hand, we cannot suppose that the number of the
different kinds is rigidly exact; for in that case we should not
know how to account for the power of assimilation. We must
suppose then that there is considerable range in the numbers of
particles that go to form an orbital system, and that the
somewhat exact chemical composition of the whole is the exactitude
of a statistical average; just as there is a close equality between
the proportions of the two sexes in any nation or province,
though there is considerable inequality in each of the different
households. Owing to the complexity of this arrangement, the
moment that there is any molecular disturbance, producing
perturbations, large numbers of the particles are thrown out
|p213

of their orbits, the systems are more or less deranged in the
immediate neighborhood of the disturbance, and the harmonic
relations between the different revolutions are somewhat
broken up. In consequence of this, the distances between
neighboring particles, which had presented a systematic
regularity, now become extremely unequal, and their average
attractions, upon which the cohesion depends, is increased.
At the same time, the particles thrown out of their systems
shoot into other systems and derange these in their turn, and
so the disturbance is propagated throughout the entire mass.
The source of disturbance, however, being removed,
interchanges of energy take place, in which there is a tendency to
equalize the vis viva of the different particles, and they
consequently tend to sink down into orbital motions again, and
gradually something very like the original state of things is
reestablished, the original orbital systems remaining, for the
most part, and the wandering particles in large proportion
finding places in these systems or forming new ones. Some of
these particles will not find any places, and thus there will be
a certain amount of wasting of the protoplasmic mass. If the
same disturbance is repeated, so far as the orbital systems
remain the same as they were before, there will be a repetition
of almost exactly the same events. The same kinds of particles
(the same I mean in mass, velocities, directions of movement,
attractions, etc.) which were thrown out of the different
systems before will generally get thrown out again, until, if the
disturbance is repeated several times, there gets to be rather
a deficiency of those kinds of particles in the different systems,
when some new kinds will begin to be thrown out. These new
kinds will differently perturb the systems into which they fly,
tending to cause dasses of particles like themselves to be
thrown out, and, in that way, the direction of propagation of
the disturbance, as well as its velocity and intensity, may be
altered, and, in short, the phenomenon of fatigue will be
manifested. Even when the protoplasmic mass is left to itself, there
will be some wandering of particles, producing regions of
slight disturbance, and so inequalities of tension; and thus,
streams will be set up, movements of the mass will take place,
and slender processes will be formed. If, however, the mass
be left to itself for a very long time, all the particles that are
|p214

readily thrown out will, in all the changes that are rung on the
combinations of situations and velocities in the orbital systems,
get thrown out; while the others will constantly tend to settle
down into more stable relations; and so the protoplasm will
gradually take a passive state from which its orbital systems
are not easily deranged. The food for those kinds of
protoplasm that are capable of marked reaction has to be presented
in chemically complex form. It must doubtless present
particles just like those that revolve in the orbital systems of
the protoplasm. In order to be drawn into an orbital system,
a particle, whether of food matter or just thrown off from some
other system, must have the right mass, must present itself at
the right point, and move with the right velocity in the right
direction and be subject to the right attractions. It will be
right in all these respects, if it comes to take the place of a
particle which has just been thrown off; and thus, particles
taken in are particularly likely to be of the same material and
masses and to take the same places in the orbits as those that
have been shortly before thrown off. Now these particles being
the exact representatives of those thrown off, will be likely to
be thrown off by the same disturbances, in the same directions,
and with the same results, as those which were thrown off
before; and this accounts for the principle of habit. All the
higher kinds of protoplasm, those for example which have any
marked power of contraction, are fed with matter chemically
highly complex.*

      # 6. THE TRIAD IN BIOLOGICAL
              DEVELOPMENT

  395. Whether the part played by natural selection and the
survival of the fittest in the production of species be large or
small, there remains little doubt that the Darwinian theory
indicates a real cause, which tends to adapt animal and
vegetable forms to their environment. A very remarkable feature
of it is that it shows how merely fortuitous variations of
individuals together with merely fortuitous mishaps to them
would, under the action of heredity, result, not in mere
irregularity, nor even in a statistical constancy, but in continual and

  * The following note is appended to this section: "Here the Chemical Idea."
For this, see vol. 6, bk. I, ch. 8.
|p215

indefinite progress toward a better adaptation of means to
ends. How can this be? What, abstractly stated, is the peculiar
factor in the conditions of the problem which brings about this
singular consequence?
  396. Suppose a million persons, each provided with one
dollar, to sit down to play a simple and fair game of chance,
betting for example on whether a die turns up an odd or even
number. The players are supposed to make their bets
independently of one another, and each to bet on the result of each
throw one dollar against a dollar on the part of the bank. Of
course, at the very first bet, one-half of them would lose their
only dollar and go out of the game, for it is supposed that no
credit is allowed, while the other half would win each $1 and
so come to be worth $2. Of these 500,000 players, after the
second throw, 250,000 would have lost, and so be worth only
$1 each, while the other 250,000 would have won, and so be
worth $3. After the third throw, 125,000, or one-half of those
who had had $1 each, would be ruined; 250,000 would be
worth $2 (namely one-half the 250,000 who had had $1 each,
and one-half the 250,000 who had had $3 each) and 125,000
would be worth $4 each. The further progress of the game is
illustrated by the table on page 216, where the numbers of
players are given having each possible sum after the first,
second, third, etc., throws. It will be seen by the table that,
at the end of the fourth throw, the most usual fortune is $3, at
the end of the ninth $4, at the end of the sixteenth $5, and in
like manner at the end of the twenty-fifth it would be $6, at
the end of the thirty-sixth $7, and so forth. Here, then,
would be a continual increase of wealth, which is a sort of
"adaptation to one's environment," produced by a survival
of the fittest, that is, by the elimination from the game of
every player who has lost his last dollar. It is easy to see that
the increase of average and usual wealth comes about by the
subtraction of all those small fortunes which would be in the
hands of men who had once been bankrupt had they been
allowed to continue betting.
  397. Now the adaptation of a species to its environment
consists, for the purposes of natural selection, in a power of
continuing to exist, that is to say, in the power of one
generation to bring forth another; for as long as another generation
{a_LANDSCAPE_PAGE}
|p217

is brought forth the species will continue and as soon as this
ceases it is doomed after one lifetime. This reproductive
faculty, then, depending partly on direct fecundity, and partly
on the animal's living through the age of procreation, is
precisely what the Darwinian theory accounts for. This character
plainly is one of those which has an absolute minimum, for no
animal can produce fewer offspring than none at all and it has
no apparent upper limit, so that it is quite analogous to the
wealth of those players. It is to be remarked that the phrase
"survival of the fittest" in the formula of the principle does
not mean the survival of the fittest individuals, but the
survival of the fittest types; for the theory does not at all require
that individuals ill-adapted to their environment should die at
an earlier age than others, so long only as they do not reproduce
so many offspring as others; and indeed it is not necessary that
this would go so far as to extinguish the line of descent,
provided there be some reason why the offspring of ill-adapted
parents are less likely than others to inherit those parents'
characteristics. It seems likely that the process, as a general
rule, is something as follows: A given individual is in some
respect ill-adapted to his environment, that is to say, he has
characters which are generally unfavorable to the production
of numerous offspring. These characters will be apt to weaken
the reproductive system of that individual, for various reasons,
so that its offspring are not up to the average strength of the
species. This second generation will couple with other
individuals, but owing to their weakness, their offspring will be
more apt to resemble the other parent, and so the unfavorable
character will gradually be eliminated, not merely by
diminished numbers of offspring, but also by the offspring more
resembling the stronger parent. There are other ways in
which the unfavorable characters will disappear. When the
procreative power is weakened, there are many examples to
show that the principle of heredity becomes relaxed, and the
race shows more tendency to sporting. This sporting will go
on until in the course of it the unfavorable character has become
obliterated. The general power of reproduction thereupon
becomes strengthened; with it the direct procreative force is
reinforced, the hereditary transmission of characters again
becomes more strict, and the improved type is hardened.
|p218

  398. But all these different cases are but so many different
modes of one and the same principle, which is the elimination
of unfavorable characters. We see then that there are just
three factors in the process of natural selection; to wit: first,
the principle of individual variation or sporting; second, the
principle of hereditary transmission, which wars against the
first principle; and third, the principle of the elimination of
unfavorable characters.
  399. Let us see how far these principles correspond with
the triads that we have already met with. The principle of
sporting is the principle of irregularity, indeterminacy, chance.
It corresponds with the irregular and manifold wandering of
particles in the active state of the protoplasm. It is the
bringing in of something fresh and first. The principle of heredity
is the principle of the determination of something by what
went before, the principle of compulsion, corresponding to will
and sense. The principle of the elimination of unfavorable
characters is the principle of generalization by casting out of
sporadic cases, corresponding particularly to the principle of
forgetfulness in the action of the nervous system. We have,
then, here, a somewhat imperfect reproduction of the same
triad as before. Its imperfection may be the imperfection of
the theory of development.*


        # 7. THE TRIAD IN PHYSICS

  400. Metaphysical philosophy may almost be called the
child of geometry. Of the three schools of early Greek
philosophers, two, the Ionic and the Pythagorean, were all
geometers, and the interest of the Eleatics in geometry is often
mentioned. Plato was a great figure in the history of both subjects;
and Aristotle derived from the study of space some of his
most potent conceptions. Metaphysics depends in great
measure on the idea of rigid demonstration from first principles;
and this idea, as well in regard to the process as the axioms
from which it sets out, bears its paternity on its face.
Moreover, the conviction that any metaphysical philosophy is
possible has been upheld at all times, as Kant well says, by the
example in geometry of a similar science.

 * Cf. vol. 6, bk. I, ch. 10.
|p219

  401. The unconditional surrender, then, by the
mathematicians of our time of the absolute exactitude of the axioms
of geometry cannot prove an insignificant event for the history
of philosophy. Gauss, the greatest of geometers, declares that
"there is no reason to think that the sum of the three angles
of a triangle is exactly equal to two right angles."* It is true,
experience shows that the deviation of that sum from that
amount is so excessively small that language must be
ingeniously used to express the degree of approximation: but
experience never can show any truth to be exact, nor so much as
give the least reason to think it to be so, unless it be supported
by some other considerations. We can only say that the sum
of the three angles of any given triangle cannot be much
greater or less than two right angles; but that exact value
is only one among an infinite number of others each of which
is as possible as that. So say the mathematicians with
unanimity.
  402. The absolute exactitude of the geometrical axioms is
exploded; and the corresponding belief in the metaphysical
axioms, considering the dependence of metaphysics on
geometry, must surely follow it to the tomb of extinct creeds. The
first to go must be the proposition that every event in the
universe is precisely determined by causes according to inviolable
law. We have no reason to think that this is absolutely exact.
Experience shows that it is so to a wonderful degree of
approximation, and that is all. This degree of approximation will be
a value for future scientific investigation to determine; but we
have no more reason to think that the error of the ordinary
statement is precisely zero, than any one of an infinity of
values in that neighborhood. The odds are infinity to one that
it is not zero; and we are bound to think of it as a quantity of
which zero is only one possible value. Phoenix, in his Lectures
on Astronomy, ** referring to Joshua's commanding the sun to
stand still, said that he could not help suspecting that it might
have wiggled a very little when Joshua was not looking directly
at it. We know that when we try to verify any law of nature
by experiment, we always find discrepancies between the
observations and the theory. These we rightly refer to errors

  * See, e.g., General Investigations of Curved Surfaces, art. 20.
  ** See 156.
|p220

of observation; but why may there not be similar aberrations
due to the imperfect obedience of the facts to law?
  403. Grant that this is conceivable and there can be
nothing in experience to negative it. Strange to say, there are
many people who will have a difficulty in conceiving of an
element of lawlessness in the universe, and who may perhaps
be tempted to reckon the doctrine of the perfect rule of
causality as one of the original instinctive beliefs, like that of space
having three dimensions. Far from that, it is historically
altogether a modern notion, a loose inference from the discoveries
of science. Aristotle* often lays it down that some things are
determined by causes while others happen by chance.
Lucretius, ** following Democritus, supposes his primordial atoms to
deviate from their rectilinear trajectories just fortuitously,
and without any reason at all. To the ancients, there was
nothing strange in such notions; they were matters of course;
the strange thing would have been to have said that there was
no chance. So we are under no inward necessity of believing
in perfect causality if we do not find any facts to bear it
out.
  404. I am very far from holding that experience is our
only light; Whewell's views of scientific method seem to me
truer than Mill's; so much so that I should pronounce the
known principles of physics to be but a development of original
instinctive beliefs. Yet I cannot help acknowledging that the
whole history of thought shows that our instinctive beliefs, in
their original condition, are so mixed up with error that they
can never be trusted till they have been corrected by
experiment. Now the only thing that the inference from experience
can ever teach us is the approximate value of a ratio. It all
rests on the principle of sampling; we take a handful of coffee
from a bag, and we judge that there is about the same
proportion of sound beans in the whole bag that there is in that
sample. At this rate, every proposition which we can be
entitled to make about the real world must be an approximate
one; we never can have the right to hold any truth to be exact.
Approximation must be the fabric out of which our philosophy
has to be built.

  * e.g. in the Physics 195b, 31-198a, 13.
  ** Bk. II, 1. 216-93.
|p221

  405. I come now to another point. Most systems of
philosophy maintain certain facts or principles as ultimate.
In truth, any fact is in one sense ultimate -- that is to say, in
its isolated aggressive stubbornness and individual reality.
What Scotus calls the haecceities of things, the hereness and
nowness of them, are indeed ultimate. Why this which is here
is such as it is; how, for instance, if it happens to be a grain of
sand, it came to be so small and so hard, we can ask; we can
also ask how it got carried here; but the explanation in this
case merely carries us back to the fact that it was once in some
other place, where similar things might naturally be expected
to be. Why IT, independently of its general characters, comes
to have any definite place in the world, is not a question to be
asked; it is simply an ultimate fact. There is also another class
of facts of which it is not reasonable to expect an explanation,
namely, facts of indeterminacy or variety. Why one definite
kind of event is frequent and another rare, is a question to be
asked, but a reason for the general fact that of events some
kinds are common and some rare, it would be unfair to demand.
If all births took place on a given day of the week, or if there
were always more on Sundays than on Mondays, that would
be a fact to be accounted for, but that they happen in about
equal proportions on all the days requires no particular
explanation. If we were to find that all the grains of sand on a certain
beach separated themselves into two or more sharply discrete
classes, as spherical and cubical ones, there would be something
to be explained, but that they are of various sizes and shapes,
of no definable character, can only be referred to the general
manifoldness of nature. Indeterminacy, then, or pure firstness,
and haecceity, or pure secondness, are facts not calling for and
not capable of explanation. Indeterminacy affords us nothing
to ask a question about; haecceity is the ultima ratio, the
brutal fact that will not be questioned. But every fact of a
general or orderly nature calls for an explanation; and logic
forbids us to assume in regard to any given fact of that sort
that it is of its own nature absolutely inexplicable. This is
what Kant * calls a regulative principle, that is to say, an
intellectual hope. The sole immediate purpose of thinking is
to render things intelligible; and to think and yet in that very

 * After the scholastics; See Eckius [?] in Petrus Hispanus 48b, nota 1.
|p222

act to think a thing unintelligible is a self-stultification. It is
as though a man furnished with a pistol to defend himself
against an enemy were, on finding that enemy very
redoubtable, to use his pistol to blow his own brains out to escape being
killed by his enemy. Despair is insanity. True, there may be
facts that will never get explained; but that any given fact is
of the number, is what experience can never give us reason to
think; far less can it show that any fact is of its own nature
unintelligible. We must therefore be guided by the rule of
hope, and consequently we must reject every philosophy or
general conception of the universe, which could ever lead to the
conclusion that any given general fact is an ultimate one. We
must look forward to the explanation, not of all things, but of
any given thing whatever. There is no contradiction here, any
more than there is in our holding each one of our opinions,
while we are ready to admit that it is probable that not all are
true; or any more than there is in saying that any future time
will sometime be passed, though there never will be a time
when all time is past.
  406. Among other regular facts that have to be explained
is law or regularity itself. We enormously exaggerate the part
that law plays in the universe. It is by means of regularities
that we understand what little we do understand of the world,
and thus there is a sort of mental perspective which brings
regular phenomena to the foreground. We say that every
event is determined by causes according to law. But apart
from the fact that this must not be regarded as absolutely true,
it does not mean so much as it seems to do. We do not mean,
for example, that if a man and his antipode both sneeze at the
same instant, that that event comes under any general law.
That is merely what we call a coincidence. But what we mean
is there was a cause for the first man's sneezing, and another
cause for the second man's sneezing; and the aggregate of these
two events make up the first event about which we began by
inquiring. The doctrine is that the events of the physical
universe are merely motions of matter, and that these obey
the laws of dynamics. But this only amounts to saying that
among the countless systems of relationship existing among
things we have found one that is universal and at the same time
is subject to law. There is nothing except this singular character|p223

which makes this particular system of relationship any
more important than the others. From this point of view,
uniformity is seen to be really a highly exceptional phenomenon.
But we pay no attention to irregular relationships, as having
no interest for us.
  407. We are brought, then, to this: conformity to law
exists only within a limited range of events and even there is
not perfect, for an element of pure spontaneity or lawless
originality mingles, or at least must be supposed to mingle,
with law everywhere. Moreover, conformity with law is a
fact requiring to be explained; and since law in general cannot
be explained by any law in particular, the explanation must
consist in showing how law is developed out of pure chance,
irregularity, and indeterminacy.
  408. To this problem we are bound to address ourselves;
and it is particularly needful to do so in the present state of
science. The theory of the molecular constitution of matter
has now been carried as far as there are clear indications to
direct us, and we are now in the mists. To develope the
mathematical consequences of any hypothesis as to the nature and
laws of the minute parts of matter, and then to test it by
physical experiment, will take fifty years; and out of the
innumerable hypotheses that might be framed, there seems to
be nothing to make one more antecedently probable than
another. At this rate how long will it take to make any decided
advance? We need some hint as to how molecules may be
expected to behave; whether, for instance, they would be likely
to attract or repel one another inversely as the fifth power of
the distance, so that we may be saved from many false
suppositions, if we are not at once shown the way to the true one.
Tell us how the laws of nature came about, and we may
distinguish in some measure between laws that might and laws
that could not have resulted from such a process of development.
  409. To find that out is our task. I will begin the work
with this guess. Uniformities in the modes of action of things
have come about by their taking habits. At present, the course
of events is approximately deterrnined by law. In the past that
approximation was less perfect; in the future it will be more
perfect. The tendency to obey laws has always been and
always will be growing. We look back toward a point in the
|p224

infinitely distant past when there was no law but mere
indeterminacy; we look forward to a point in the infinitely distant
future when there will be no indeterminacy or chance but a
complete reign of law. But at any assignable date in the past,
however early, there was already some tendency toward
uniformity; and at any assignable date in the future there will be
some slight aberrancy from law. Moreover, all things have a
tendency to take habits. For atoms and their parts, molecules
and groups of molecules, and in short every conceivable real
object, there is a greater probability of acting as on a former
like occasion than otherwise. This tendency itself constitutes
a regularity, and is continually on the increase. In looking
back into the past we are looking toward periods when it was
a less and less decided tendency. But its own essential nature
is to grow. It is a generalizing tendency; it causes actions in
the future to follow some generalization of past actions; and
this tendency is itself something capable of similar
generalizations; and thus, it is self-generative. We have therefore only to
suppose the smallest spoor of it in the past,and that germ would
have been bound to develop into a mighty and over-ruling
principle, until it supersedes itself by strengthening habits into
absolute laws regulating the action of all things in every respect
in the indefinite future.
  According to this, three elements are active in the world:
first, chance; second, law; and third, habit-taking.
  410. Such is our guess of the secret of the sphynx. To raise
it from the rank of philosophical speculation to that of a
scientific hypothesis, we must show that consequences can be
deduced from it with more or less probability which can be
compared with observation. We must show that there is some
method of deducing the characters of the laws which could
result in this way by the action of habit-taking on purely
fortuitous occurrences, and a method of ascertaining whether
such characters belong to the actual laws of nature.
  411. The existence of things consists in their regular
behavior. If an atom had no regular attractions and
repulsions, if its mass was at one instant nothing, at another a ton,
at another a negative quantity, if its motion instead of being
continuous, consisted in a series of leaps from one place to
another without passing through any intervening places, and
|p225

if there were no definite relations between its different
positions, velocities and directions of displacement, if it were at
one time in one place and at another time in a dozen, such a
disjointed plurality of phenomena would not make up any
existing thing. Not only substances, but events, too, are
constituted by regularities. The flow of time, for example, in
itself is a regularity. The original chaos, therefore, where there
was no regularity, was in effect a state of mere indeterminacy,
in which nothing existed or really happened.
  412. Our conceptions of the first stages of the development,
before time yet existed, must be as vague and figurative as the
expressions of the first chapter of Genesis. Out of the womb of
indeterminacy we must say that there would have come
something, by the principle of Firstness, which we may call a flash.
Then by the principle of habit there would have been a second
fiash. Though time would not yet have been, this second flash
was in some sense after the first, because resulting from it.
Then there would have come other successions ever more and
more closely connected, the habits and the tendency to take
them ever strengthening themselves, until the events would
have been bound together into something like a continuous
flow. We have no reason to think that even now time is quite
perfectly continuous and uniform in its flow. The quasi-flow
which would result would, however, differ essentially from
time in this respect, that it would not necessarily be in a single
stream. Different flashesmight start different streams, between
which there should be no relations of contemporaneity or
succession. So one stream might branch into two, or two might
coalesce. But the further result of habit would inevitably be
to separate utterly those that were long separated, and to
make those which presented frequent common points coalesce
into perfect union. Those that were completely separated
would be so many different worlds which would know nothing
of one another; so that the effect would be just what we
actually observe.
  413. But Secondness is of two types. Consequently besides
flashes genuinely second to others, so as to come after them,
there will be pairs of flashes, or, since time is now supposed to
be developed, we had better say pairs of states, which are
reciprocally second, each member of the pair to the other. This
|p226

is the first germ of spatial extension. These states will undergo
changes; and habits will be formed of passing from certain
states to certain others, and of not passing from certain states
to certain others. Those states to which a state will
immediately pass will be adjacent to it; and thus habits will be
formed which will constitute a spatial continuum, but differing
from our space by being very irregular in its connections,
having one number of dimensions in one place and another number
in another place, and being different for one moving state from
what it is for another.
  414. Pairs of states will also begin to take habits, and thus
each state having different habits with reference to the different
other states will give rise to bundles of habits, which will be
substances. * Some of these states will chance to take habits of
persistency, and will get to be less and less liable to disappear;
while those that fail to take such habits will fall out of existence.
Thus, substances will get to be permanent.
  415. In fact, habits, from the mode of their formation,
necessarily consist in the permanence of some relation, and
therefore, on this theory, each law of nature would consist
in some permanence, such as the permanence of mass,
momentum, and energy. In this respect, the theory suits the facts
admirably.
  416. The substances carrying their habits with them in
their motions through space will tend to render the different
parts of space alike. Thus, the dimensionality of space will
tend gradually to uniformity; and multiple connections, except
at infinity, where substances never go, will be obliterated. At
the outset, the connections of space were probably different
for one substance and part of a substance from what they were
for another; that is to say, points adjacent or near one another
for the motions of one body would not be so for another; and
this may possibly have contributed to break substances into
little pieces or atoms. But the mutual actions of bodies would
have tended to reduce their habits to uniformity in this respect;
and besides there must have arisen conflicts between the
habits of bodies and the habits of parts of space, which would
never have ceased till they were brought into conformity.

  * I use substance, here, in the old sense of a thing, not in the modern chemical
sense.