Lowell Lectures 1903

1.15-26   G-c.1903-2a
1.324
1.343-349
1.521-544
1.591-615
5.590-604


|p3
    PRINCIPLES OF PHILOSOPHY

LESSONS FROM THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

            # 1. NOMINALISM*

  15. Very early in my studies of logic, before I had really
been devoting myself to it more than four or five years, it
became quite manifest to me that this science was in a bad
condition, entirely unworthy of the general state of intellectual
development of our age; and in consequence of this, every other
branch of philosophy except ethics -- for it was already clear
that psychology was a special science and no part of philosophy
 -- was in a similar disgraceful state. About that time -- say
the date of Mansel's Prolegomena Logica <1851> -- Logic touched
bottom. There was no room for it to become more degraded
It had been sinking steadily, and relatively to the advance of
physical science, by no means slowly from the time of the
revival of learning -- say from the date of the last fall of
Constantinople. <1453> One important addition to the subject had been
made early in the eighteenth century, the Doctrine of Chances.
But this had not come from the professed logicians, who knew
nothing about it. Whewell, it is true, had been doing some fine
work; but it was not of a fundamental character. De Morgan
and Boole had laid the foundations for modern exact logic, but
they can hardly be said to have begun the erection of the
edifice itself. Under these circumstances, I naturally opened the
dusty folios of the scholastic doctors. Thought generally was,
of course, in a somewhat low condition under the Plantagenets.
You can appraise it very well by the impression that Dante,
Chaucer, Marco Polo, Froissart, and the great cathedrals make
upon us. But [their] logic, relatively to the general condition of

* From the "Lowell Lectures of 1903," Lecture IIIa.|p4

thought, was marvellously exact and critical. They can tell
us nothing concerning methods of reasoning since their own
reasoning was puerile; but their analyses of thought and their
discussions of all those questions of logic that almost trench
upon metaphysics are very instructive as well as very good
discipline in that subtle kind of thinking that is required in logic.
  16. In the days of which I am speaking, the age of Robert
of Lincoln, Roger Bacon, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Duns
Scotus, the question of nominalism and realism was regarded
as definitively and conclusively settled in favor of realism. You
know what the question was. It was whether laws and general
types are figments of the mind or are real. If this be understood
to mean whether there really are any laws and types, it is
strictly speaking a question of metaphysics and not of logic.
But as a first step toward its solution, it is proper to ask whether,
granting that our common-sense beliefs are true, the analysis
of the meaning of those beliefs shows that, according to those
beliefs, laws and types are objective or subjective. This is a
question of logic rather than of metaphysics -- and as soon as
this is answered the reply to the other question immediately
follows after.
  17. Notwithstanding a great outburst of nominalism in
the fourteenth century which was connected with politics, the
nominalists being generally opposed to the excessive powers of
the pope and in favor of civil government, a connection that
lent to the philosophical doctrine a factitious following, the
Scotists, who were realists, were in most places the
predominant party, and retained possession of the universities. At the
revival of learning they stubbornly opposed the new studies;
and thus the word Duns, the proper name of their master, came
to mean an adversary of learning. The word originally further
implied that the person so called was a master of subtle thought
with which the humanists were unable to cope. But in another
generation the disputations by which that power of thought
was kept in training had lost their liveliness; and the
consequence was that Scotism died out when the strong Scotists died.
It was a mere change of fashion.
  18. The humanists were weak thinkers. Some of them no
doubt might have been trained to be strong thinkers; but they
had no severe training in thought. All their energies went to|p5

writing a classical language and an artistic style of expression.
They went to the ancients for their philosophy; and mostly
took up the three easiest of the ancient sects of philosophy,
Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Scepticism. Epicureanism was a
doctrine extremely like that of John Stuart Mill. The
Epicureans alone of the later ancient schools believed in inductive
reasoning, which they grounded upon the uniformity of nature,
although they made the uniformity of nature to consist in
somewhat different characters from those Stuart Mill
emphasizes. Like Mill, the Epicureans were extreme nominalists.
The Stoics advocated the flattest materialism, which nobody
any longer has any need of doing since the new invention of
Monism enables a man to be perfectly materialist in substance,
and as idealistic as he likes in words. Of course the Stoics
could not but be nominalists. They took no stock in inductive
reasoning. They held it to be a transparent fallacy. The
Sceptics of the Renaissance were something like the agnostics
of the generation now passing away, except that they went
much further. Our agnostics contented themselves with
declaring everything beyond ordinary generalizations of
experience to be unknowable, while the Sceptics did not think any
scientific knowledge of any description to be possible. If you
turn over the pages, for example, of Cornelius Agrippa's book
De [incertitudine et] vanitate scientiarum [et artium] [1531], you
will find he takes up every science in succession, arithmetic,
geometry, mechanics, optics, and after examination pronounces
each to be altogether beyond the power of the human mind.
Of course, therefore, as far as they believed in anything at all,
the Sceptics were nominalists.
  19. In short, there was a tidal wave of nominalism.
Descartes was a nominalist. Locke and his following, Berkeley,
Hartley, Hume, and even Reid, were nominalists. Leibniz
was an extreme nominalist, and Remusat [C. F. M.?] who
has lately made an attempt to repair the edifice of Leibnizian
monadology, does so by cutting away every part which leans
at all toward realism. Kant was a nominalist; although his
philosophy would have been rendered compacter, more
consistent, and stronger if its author had taken up realism, as he
certainly would have done if he had read Scotus. Hegel was a
nominalist of realistic yearnings. I might continue the list
|p6

much further. Thus, in one word, all modern philosophy of
every sect has been nominalistic.
  20. In a long notice of Frazer's Berkeley, in the North
American Review for October, 1871,* I declared for realism. I
have since very carefully and thoroughly revised my
philosophical opinions more than half a dozen times, and have
modified them more or less on most topics; but I have never
been able to think differently on that question of nominalism
and realism. In that paper I acknowledged that the tendency
of science has been toward nominalism; but the late Dr.
Francis Ellingwood Abbot in the very remarkable
introduction to his book entitled " Scientific Theism " [1885], showed on
the contrary, quite conclusively, that science has always been
at heart realistic, and always must be so; and upon comparing
his writings with mine, it is easily seen that these features of
nominalism which I pointed out in science are merely
superficial and transient.
  21. The heart of the dispute lies in this. The modern
philosophers -- one and all, unless Schelling be an exception --
recognize but one mode of being, the being of an individual
thing or fact, the being which consists in the object's crowding
out a place for itself in the universe, so to speak, and reacting
by brute force of fact, against all other things. I call that
existence.
  22. Aristotle, on the other hand, whose system, like all
the greatest systems, was evolutionary, recognized besides an
embryonic kind of being, like the being of a tree in its seed, or
like the being of a future contingent event, depending on how
a man shall decide to act. In a few passages Aristotle seems to
have a dim aper‡ue of a third mode of being in the entelechy.
The embryonic being for Aristotle was the being he called
matter, which is alike in all things, and which in the course of
its development took on form. Form is an element having a
different mode of being. The whole philosophy of the
scholastic doctors is an attempt to mould this doctrine of Aristotle
into harmony with christian truth. This harmony the different
doctors attempted to bring about in different ways. But all
the realists agree in reversing the order of Aristotle's evolution
by making the form come first, and the individuation of that
  * See vol. 9.
|p7

form come later. Thus, they too recognized two modes of
being; but they were not the two modes of being of Aristotle.
  23. My view is that there are three modes of being. I
hold that we can directly observe them in elements of
whatever is at any time before the mind in any way. They are the
being of positive qualitative possibility, the being of actual
fact, and the being of law that will govern facts in the future.
  24. Let us begin with considering actuality, and try to
make out just what it consists in. If I ask you what the
actuality of an event consists in, you will tell me that it consists in
its happening then and there. The specifications then and there
involve all its relations to other existents. The actuality of the
event seems to lie in its relations to the universe of existents.
A court may issue injunctions and judgements against me and
I not care a snap of my finger for them. I may think them idle
vapor. But when I feel the sheriff's hand on my shoulder, I
shall begin to have a sense of actuality. Actuality is something
brute. There is no reason in it. I instance putting your
shoulder against a door and trying to force it open against an
unseen, silent, and unknown resistance. We have a two-sided
consciousness of effort and resistance, which seems to me to
come tolerably near to a pure sense of actuality. On the whole,
I think we have here a mode of being of one thing which
consists in how a second object is. I call that Secondness.
  25. Besides this, there are two modes of being that I call
Firstness and Thirdness. Firstness is the mode of being which
consists in its subject's being positively such as it is regardless
of aught else. That can only be a possibility. For as long as
things do not act upon one another there is no sense or
meaning in saying that they have any being, unless it be that they
are such in themselves that they may perhaps come into
relation with others. The mode of being a redness, before anything
in the universe was yet red, was nevertheless a positive
qualitative possibility. And redness in itself, even if it be embodied,
is something positive and sui generis. That I call Firstness.
We naturally attribute Firstness to outward objects, that is
we suppose they have capacities in themselves which may or
may not be already actualized, which may or may not ever be
actualized, although we can know nothing of such possibilities
[except] so far as they are actualized.
|p8

  26. Now for Thirdness. Five minutes of our waking life
will hardly pass without our making some kind of prediction;
and in the majority of cases these predictions are fulfilled in
the event. Yet a prediction is essentially of a general nature,
and cannot ever be completely fulfilled. To say that a
prediction has a decided tendency to be fulfilled, is to say that the
future events are in a measure really governed by a law. If a
pair of dice turns up sixes five times running, that is a mere
uniformity. The dice might happen fortuitously to turn up
sixes a thousand times running. But that would not afford
the slightest security for a prediction that they would turn up
sixes the next time. If the prediction has a tendency to be
fulfilled, it must be that future events have a tendency to
conform to a general rule. "Oh," but say the nominalists, "this
general rule is nothing but a mere word or couple of words!"
I reply, "Nobody ever dreamed of denying that what is
general is of the nature of a general sign; but the question is
whether future events will conform to it or not. If they will,
your adjective 'mere' seems to be ill-placed." A rule to which
future events have a tendency to conform is ipso facto an
important thing, an important element in the happening of
those events. This mode of being which consists, mind my
word if you please, the mode of being which consists in the fact
that future facts of Secondness will take on a determinate
general character, I call a Thirdness.

  324. [There is a category] which the rough and tumble of
life renders most familiarly prominent. We are continually
bumping up against hard fact. We expected one thing, or
passively took it for granted, and had the image of it in our
minds, but experience forces that idea into the background, and
compels us to think quite differently. You get this kind of
consciousness in some approach to purity when you put your
shoulder against a door and try to force it open. You have a
sense of resistance and at the same time a sense of effort.
There can be no resistance without effort; there can be no
effort without resistance. They are only two ways of describing
the same experience. It is a double consciousness. We become
aware of ourself in becoming aware of the not-self. The waking
state is a consciousness of reaction; and as the consciousness
itself is two-sided, so it has also two varieties; namely, action,
where our modification of other things is more prominent than
their reaction on us, and perception, where their effect on us is
overwhelmingly greater than our effect on them. And this
notion, of being such as other things make us, is such a
prominent part of our life that we conceive other things also to exist
by virtue of their reactions against each other. The idea of
other, of not, becomes a very pivot of thought. To this element
I give the name of Secondness.

  343.... It is impossible to resolve everything in our
thoughts into those two elements [of Firstness and Secondness].
We may say that the bulk of what is actually done consists of
Secondness -- or better, Secondness is the predominant
character of what has been done. The immediate present, could we
seize it, would have no character but its Firstness. Not that I
mean to say that immediate consciousness (a pure fiction, by
  * From the "Lowell Lectures of 1903," III, vol. 1, 3d Draught. See 324 and 521.
|p174

the way), would be Firstness, but that the quality of what we
are immediately conscious of, which is no fiction, is Firstness.
But we constantly predict what is to be. Now what is to be,
according to our conception of it, can never become wholly
past. In general, we may say that meanings are inexhaustible.
We are too apt to think that what one means to do and the
meaning of a word are quite unrelated meanings of the word
"meaning," or that they are only connected by both referring
to some actual operation of the mind. Professor Royce
especially in his great work The World and the Individual has
done much to break up this mistake. In truth the only
difference is that when a person means to do anything he is in some
state in consequence of which the brute reactions between
things will be moulded [in] to conformity to the form to which
the man's mind is itself moulded, while the meaning of a word
really lies in the way in which it might, in a proper position in a
proposition believed, tend to mould the conduct of a person
into conformity to that to which it is itself moulded. Not only
will meaning always, more or less, in the long run, mould
reactions to itself, but it is only in doing so that its own being
consists. For this reason I call this element of the phenomenon or
object of thought the element of Thirdness. It is that which is
what it is by virtue of imparting a quality to reactions in the
future.
  344. There is a strong tendency in us all to be sceptical
about there being any real meaning or law in things. This
scepticism is strongest in the most masculine thinkers. I
applaud scepticism with all my heart, provided it have four
qualities: first, that it be sincere and real doubt; second, that
it be aggressive; third, that it push inquiry; and fourth, that
it stand ready to acknowledge what it now doubts, as soon as
the doubted element comes clearly to light. To be angry with
sceptics, who, whether they are aware of it or not, are the best
friends of spiritual truth, is a manifest sign that the angry
person is himself infected with scepticism -- not, however, of the
innocent and wholesome kind that tries to bring truth to light
but of the mendacious, clandestine, disguised, and
conservative variety that is afraid of truth, although truth merely means
the way to attain one's purposes. If the sceptics think that any
account can be given of the phenomena of the universe while

|p175

they leave Meaning out of account, by all means let them go
ahead and try to do it. It is a most laudable and wholesome
enterprise. But when they go so far as to say that there is no
such idea in our minds, irreducible to anything else, I say to
them, " Gentlemen, your strongest sentiment, to which I
subscribe with all my heart, is that a man worthy of that name
will not allow petty intellectual predilections to blind him to
truth, which consists in the conformity of his thoughts to his
purposes. But you know there is such a thing as a defect of
candor of which one is not oneself aware. You perceive, no
doubt, that if there be an element of thought irreducible to any
other, it would be hard, on your principles, to account for man's
having it, unless he derived it from environing Nature. But
if, because of that, you were to turn your gaze away from an
idea that shines out clearly in your mind, you would be
violating your principles in a very much more radical way."
  345. I will sketch a proof that the idea of meaning is
irreducible to those of quality and reaction. It depends on two
main premisses. The first is that every genuine triadic relation
involves meaning, as meaning is obviously a triadic relation.
The second is that a triadic relation is inexpressible by means
of dyadic relations alone. Considerable reflexion may be
required to convince yourself of the first of these premisses,
that every triadic relation involves meaning. There will be
two lines of inquiry. First, all physical forces appear to
subsist between pairs of particles. This was assumed by
Helmholtz in his original paper, On the Conservation of Forces.*
Take any fact in physics of the triadic kind, by which I mean
a fact which can only be deifined by simultaneous reference to
three things, and you will find there is ample evidence that it
never was produced by the action of forces on mere dyadic
conditions. Thus, your right hand is that hand which is toward
the east, when you face the north with your head toward the
zenith. Three things, east, west, and up, are required to define
the difference between right and left. Consequently chemists
find that those substances which rotate the plane of
polarization to the right or left can only be produced from such [similar]
active substances. They are all of such complex constitution

  *  Uber die Erhaltung der Kraft, Einleitung (1847). See 1889 ed. in Ostwald's
"Klassiker d.E.W." series.
|p176

that they cannot have existed when the earth was very hot, and
how the first one was produced is a puzzle. It cannot have
been by the action of brute forces. For the second branch of
the inquiry, you must train yourself to the analysis of relations,
beginning with such as are very markedly triadic, gradually
going on to others. In that way, you will convince yourself
thoroughly that every genuine triadic relation involves thought
or meaning. Take, for example, the relation of giving. A gives
B to C. This does not consist in A's throwing B away and its
accidentally hitting C, like the date-stone, which hit the Jinnee
in the eye. If that were all, it would not be a genuine triadic
relation, but merely one dyadic relation followed by another.
There need be no motion of the thing given. Giving is a
transfer of the right of property. Now right is a matter of law, and
law is a matter of thought and meaning. I there leave the
matter to your own reflection, merely adding that, though I
have inserted the word "genuine," yet I do not really think
that necessary. I think even degenerate triadic relations
involve something like thought.
  346. The other premiss of the argument that genuine
triadic relations can never be built of dyadic relations and of
qualities is easily shown. In existential graphs, a spot with one
tail -- X represents a quality, a spot with two tails -- R -- a
dyadic relation.* Joining the ends of two tails is also a dyadic
relation. But you can never by such joining make a graph
with three tails. You may think that a node connecting three
lines of identity Y is not a triadic idea. But analysis will
show that it is so. I see a man on Monday. On Tuesday I see
a man, and I exclaim, "Why, that is the very man I saw on
Monday." We may say, with sufficient accuracy, that I
directly experienced the identity. On Wednesday I see a man
and I say, " That is the same man I saw on Tuesday, and
consequently is the same I saw on Monday." There is a
recognition of triadic identity; but it is only brought about as a
conclusion from two premisses, which is itself a triadic relation.
If I see two men at once, I cannot by any such direct
experience identify both of them with a man I saw before. I can only
identify them if I regard them, not as the very same, but as
two different manifestations of the same man. But the idea of

 * See vol. 4, bk. II.
|p177

manifestation is the idea of a sign. Now a sign is something, A,
which denotes some fact or object, B, to some interpretant
thought, C.
  347. It is interesting to remark that while a graph with
three tails cannot be made out of graphs each with two or one
tail, yet combinations of graphs of three tails each will suffice
to build graphs with every higher number of tails.

{Diagram}

And analysis will show that every relation which is tetradic,
pentadic, or of any greater number of correlates is nothing but
a compound of triadic relations. It is therefore not surprising
to find that beyond the three elements of Firstness,
Secondness, and Thirdness, there is nothing else to be found in the
phenomenon.
  348. As to the common aversion to recognizing thought as
an active factor in the real world, some of its causes are easily
traced. In the first place, people are persuaded that everything
that happens in the material universe is a motion completely
determined by inviolable laws of dynamics; and that, they
think, leaves no room for any other influence. But the laws of
dynamics stand on quite a different footing from the laws of
gravitation, elasticity, electricity, and the like. The laws of
dynamics are very much like logical principles, if they are not
precisely that. They only say how bodies will move after you
have said what the forces are. They permit any forces, and
therefore any motions. Only, the principle of the conservation
of energy requires us to explain certain kinds of motions by
special hypotheses about molecules and the like. Thus, in
order that the viscosity of gases should not disobey that law
we have to suppose that gases have a certain molecular
constitution. Setting dynamical laws to one side, then, as hardly
being positive laws, but rather mere formal principles, we have
only the laws of gravitation, elasticity, electricity, and chemistry.

|p178

Now who will deliberately say that our knowledge of
these laws is sufficient to make us reasonably confident that
they are absolutely eternal and immutable, and that they
escape the great law of evolution? Each hereditary character
is a law, but it is subject to developement and to decay. Each
habit of an individual is a law; but these laws are modified so
easily by the operation of self-control, that it is one of the most
patent of facts that ideals and thought generally have a very
great infiuence on human conduct. That truth and justice are
great powers in the world is no figure of speech, but a plain
fact to which theories must accommodate themselves.
  349. The child, with his wonderful genius for language,
naturally looks upon the world as chiefly governed by thought;
for thought and expression are really one. As Wordsworth
truly says, the child is quite right in this; he is an
            "eye among the blind,
      "On whom those truths do rest
"Which we are toiling all our lives to find."
  But as he grows up, he loses this faculty; and all through his
childhood he has been stuffed with such a pack of lies, which
parents are accustomed to think are the most wholesome food
for the child -- because they do not think of his future -- that
he begins real life with the utmost contempt for all the ideas of
his childhood; and the great truth of the immanent power of
thought in the universe is flung away along with the lies. I
offer this hypothetical explanation because, if the common
aversion to regarding thought as a real power, or as anything
but a fantastic figment, were really natural, it would make an
argument of no little strength against its being acknowledged
as a real power.

  521. Very wretched is the notion of [the categories] that
can be conveyed in one lecture. They must grow up in the
mind, under the hot sunshine of hard thought, daily, bright,
well-focussed, and well-aimed thought; and you must have
patience, for long time is required to ripen the fruit. They are
no inventions of mine. Were they so, that would be sufficient
to condemn them. Confused notions of these elements appear
in the first infancy of philosophy, and they have never entirely
been forgotten. Their fundamental importance is noticed in
the beginning of Aristotle's De Caelo, where it is said ** that the
Pythagoreans knew of them.
  522. In Kant they come out with an approach to lucidity.
For Kant possessed in a high degree all seven of the mental
qualifications of a philosopher:
  1. The ability to discern what is before one's consciousness.
  2. Inventive originality.
  3. Generalizing power.
  4. Subtlety.
  5. Critical severity and sense of fact.
  6. Systematic procedure.
  7. Energy, diligence, persistency, and exclusive devotion
to philosophy.
  523. But Kant had not the sl;ghtest suspicion of the
inexhaustible intricacy of the fabric of conceptions, which is such
that I do not flatter myself that I have ever analyzed a single
idea into its constituent elements.
  524. Hegel, in some respects the greatest philosopher that
ever lived, had a somewhat juster notion of this complication,

  * From the "Lowell Lectures of 1.ø,03," Lecture III, vol. 2, 3d Draught,
following 349.
  ** 268a 11.
|p278

though an inadequate notion, too. For if he had seen what the
state of the case was, he would not have attempted in one
lifetime to cover the vast field that he attempted to clear. But
Hegel was lamentably deficient in that fifth requisite of critical
severity and sense of fact. He brought out the three elements
much more clearly [than Kant did]; but the element of
Secondness, of hard fact, is not accorded its due place in his system;
and in a lesser degree the same is true of Firstness. After
Hegel wrote, there came fifty years that were remarkably
fruitful in all the means for attaining that fifth requisite. Yet
Hegel's followers, instead of going to work to reform their
master's system, and to render his statement of it obsolete,
as every true philosopher must desire that his disciples should
do, only proposed, at best, some superficial changes without
replacing at all the rotten material with which the system
was built up.
  525. I shall not inflict upon you any account of my own
labors. Suffice it to say that my results have afforded me great
aid in the study of logic.
  I will, however, make a few remarks on these categories. By
way of preface, I must explain that in saying that the three,
Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, complete the list, I by
no means deny that there are other categories. On the
contrary, at every step of every analysis, conceptions are met with
which presumably do not belong to this series of ideas. Nor
did an investigation of them occupying me for two years reveal
any analysis of them into these as their constituents. I shall
say nothing further about them, except incidentally.
  526. As to the three universal categories, as I call them,
perhaps with no very good reason for thinking that they are
more universal than the others, we first notice that Secondness
and Thirdness are conceptions of complexity. That is not,
however, to say that they are complex conceptions. When we
think of Secondness, we naturally think of two reacting objects,
a first and a second. And along with these, as subjects, there
is their reaction. But these are not constituents out of which
the Secondness is built up. The truth is just reverse, [in] that
the being a first or a second or the being a reaction each
involves Secondness. An object cannot be a second of itself.
If it is a second, it has an element of being what another makes

|p279

it to be. That is, the being a second involves Secondness. The
reaction still more manifestly involves the being what another
makes a subject to be. Thus, while Secondness is a fact of
complexity, it is not a compound of two facts. It is a single
fact about two objects. Similar remarks apply to Thirdness.
  527. This remark at once leads to another. The Secondness
of the second, whichever of the two objects be called the second,
is different from the Secondness of the first. That is to say it
generally is so. To kill and to be killed are different. In case
there is one of the two which there is good reason for calling
the first, while the other remains the second, it is that the
Secondness is more accidental to the former than to the latter;
that there is more or less approach to a state of things in which
something, which is itself first, accidentally comes into a
Secondness that does not really modify its Firstness, while its
second in this Secondness is something whose being is of the
nature of Secondness and which has no Firstness separate from
this. It must be extremely difficult for those who are untrained
to such analyses of conceptions to make any sense of all this.
For that reason, I shall inflict very little of it upon you -- just
enough to show those who can carry what I say in their minds
that it is by no means nonsense. The extreme kind of
Secondness which I have just described is the relation of a quality to
the matter in which that quality inheres. The mode of being
of the quality is that of Firstness. That is to say, it is a
possibility. It is related to the matter accidentally; and this
relation does not change the quality at all, except that it
imparts existence, that is to say, this very relation of inherence,
to it. But the rnatter, on the other hand, has no being at all
except the being a subject of qualities. This relation of really
having qualities constitutes its existence. But if all its qualities
were to be taken away, and it were to be left quality-less
matter, it not only would not exist, but it would not have any
positive definite possibility -- such as an unembodied quality
has. It would be nothing at all.
  528. Thus we have a division of seconds into those whose
very being, or Firstness, it is to be seconds, and those whose
Secondness is only an accretion. This distinction springs out
of the essential elements of Secondness. For Secondness
involves Firstness. The concepts of the two kinds of Secondness|p280

are mixed concepts composed of Secondness and
Firstness. One is the second whose very Firstness is Secondness.
The other is a second whose Secondness is second to a
Firstness. The idea of mingling Firstness and Secondness in this
particular way is an idea distinct from the ideas of Firstness
and Secondness that it combines. It appears to be a
conception of an entirely different series of categories. At the same
time, it is an idea of which Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness
are component parts, since the distinction depends on whether
the two elements of Firstness and Secondness that are united
are so united as to be one or whether they remain two. This
distinction between two kinds of seconds, which is almost
involved in the very idea of a second, makes a distinction
between two kinds of Secondness; namely, the Secondness of
genuine seconds, or matters, which I call genuine Secondness,
and the Secondness in which one of the seconds is only a
Firstness, which I call degenerate Secondness; so that this
Secondness really amounts to nothing but this, that a subject,
in its being a second, has a Firstness, or quality. It is to be
remarked that this distinction arose from attending to extreme
cases; and consequently subdivision will be attached to it
according to the more or less essential or accidental nature of
the genuine or the degenerate Secondness. With this
distinction Thirdness has nothing to do, or at any rate has so little
to do that a satisfactory account of the distinction need not
mention Thirdness.
  529. I will just mention that among Firstnesses there is
no distinction of the genuine and the degenerate, while among
Thirdnesses we find not only a genuine but two distinct grades
of degeneracy.


# 2. THE FIRSTNESS OF FIRSTNESS, SECONDNESS, AND THIRDNESS

  530. But now I wish to call your attention to a kind of
distinction which affects Firstness more than it does
Secondness, and Secondness more than it does Thirdness. This
distinction arises from the circumstance that where you have a
triplet you have three pairs; and where you have a pair, you
have two units. Thus, Secondness is an essential part of
|p281

Thirdness though not of Firstness, and Firstness is an essential
element of both Secondness and Thirdness. Hence there is
such a thing as the Firstness of Secondness and such a thing as
the Firstness of Thirdness; and there is such a thing as the
Secondness of Thirdness. But there is no Secondness of pure
Firstness and no Thirdness of pure Firstness or Secondness.
When you strive to get the purest conceptions you can of
Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, thinking of quality,
reaction, and mediation -- what you are striving to apprehend
is pure Firstness, the Firstness of Secondness -- that is what
Secondness is, of itself -- and the Firstness of Thirdness.
When you contrast the blind compulsion in an event of reaction
considered as something which happens and which of its nature
can never happen again, since you cannot cross the same river
twice, when, I say, you contrast this compulsion with the
logical necessitation of a meaning considered as something
that has no being at all except so far as it actually gets embodied
in an event of thought, and you regard this logical necessitation
as a sort of actual compulsion, since the meaning must actually
be embodied, what you are thinking of is a Secondness involved
in Thirdness.
  531. A Firstness is exemplified in every quality of a total
feeling. It is perfectly simple and without parts; and
everything has its quality. Thus the tragedy of King Lear has its
Firstness, its flavor sui generis. That wherein all such qualities
agree is universal Firstness, the very being of Firstness. The
word possibility fits it, except that possibility implies a relation
to what exists, while universal Firstness is the mode of being
of itself. That is why a new word was required for it.
Otherwise, "possibility" would have answered the purpose.
  532. As to Secondness, I have said that our only direct
knowledge of it is in wiiling and in the experience of a
perception. It is in willing that the Secondness comes out most
strongly. But it is not pure Secondness. For, in the first place,
he who wills has a purpose; and that idea of purpose makes the
act appear as a means to an end. Now the word means is
almost an exact synonym to the word third. It certainly
involves Thirdness. Moreover, he who wills is conscious of
doing so, in the sense of representing to himself that he does so.
But representation is precisely genuine Thirdness. You must
|p282

conceive an instantaneous consciousness that is instantly and
totally forgotten and an effort without purpose. It is a
hopeless undertaking to try to realize what consciousness would be
without the element of representation. It would be like
unexpectedly hearing a great explosion of nitroglycerine before
one had recovered oneself and merely had the sense of the
breaking off of the quiet. Perhaps it might not be far from
what ordinary common sense conceives to take place when one
billiard ball caroms on another. One ball "acts" on the other;
that is, it makes an exertion minus the element of
representation. We may say with some approach to accuracy that the
general Firstness of all true Secondness is existence, though this
term more particularly applies to Secondness in so far as it is an
element of the reacting first and second. If we mean
Secondness as it is an element of the occurrence, the Firstness of it is
actuality. But actuality and existence are words expressing the
same idea in different applications. Secondness, strictly
speaking, is just when and where it takes place, and has no other
being; and therefore different Secondnesses, strictly speaking,
have in themselves no quality in common. Accordingly,
existence, or the universal Firstness of all Secondness, is really not
a quality at all. An actual dollar to your credit in the bank
does not differ in any respect from a possible imaginary dollar.
For if it did, the imaginary dollar could be imagined to be
changed in that respect, so as to agree with the actual dollar.
We thus see that actuality is not a quality, or mere mode of
feeling. Hence Hegel, whose neglect of Secondness was due
chiefiy to his not recognizing any other mode of being than
existence -- and what he calls existenz is a special variety of it
merely -- regarded pure being as pretty much the same as
nothing. It is true that the word "existence" names, as if it
were an abstract possibility, that which is precisely the not
having any being in abstract possibility; and this circumstance,
when you look upon existence as the only being, seems to make
existence all but the same as nothing.
  533. To express the Firstness of Thirdness, the peculiar
flavor or color of mediation, we have no really good word.
Mentality is, perhaps, as good as any. poor and inadequate as
it is. Here, then, are three kinds of Firstness, qualitative
possibility, existence, mentality, resulting from applying Firstness
|p283

to the three categories. We might strike new words for them:
primity, secundity, tertiality.
  534. There are also three other kinds of Firstness which
arise in a somewhat similar way; namely, the idea of a simple
original quality, the idea of a quality essentially relative, such
as that of being " an inch long "; and the idea of a quality that
consists in the way something is thought or represented, such
as the quality of being manifest.
  535. I shall not enter into any exact analysis of these ideas.
I only wished to give you such slight glimpse as I could of the
sort of questions that busy the student of phenomenology,
merely to lead up to Thirdness and to the particular kind and
aspect of Thirdness which is the sole object of logical study. I
want first to show you what genuine Thirdness is and what are
its two degenerate forms. Now we found the genuine and
degenerate forms of Secondness by considering the full ideas of
first and second. Then the genuine Secondness was found to
be reaction, where first and second are both true seconds and
the Secondness is something distinct from them, while in
degenerate Secondness, or mere reference, the first is a mere
first never attaining full Secondness.
  536. Let us proceed in the same way with Thirdness. We
have here a first, a second, and a third. The first is a positive
qualitative possibility, in itself nothing more. The second is
an existent thing without any mode of being less than
existence, but determined by that first. A third has a mode of being
which consists in the Secondnesses that it determines, the mode
of being of a law, or concept. Do not confound this with the
ideal being of a quality in itself. A quality is something
capable of being completely embodied. A law never can be
embodied in its character as a law except by determining a
habit. A quality is how something may or might have been.
A law is how an endless future must continue to be.
  537. Now in genuine Thirdness, the first, the second, and
the third are all three of the nature of thirds, or thought, while
in respect to one another they are first, second, and third.
The first is thought in its capacity as mere possibility; that is,
mere mind capable of thinking, or a mere vague idea. The
second is thought playing the role of a Secondness, or event.
That is, it is of the general nature of experience or information.

|p284

The third is thought in its role as governing Secondness. It
brings the information into the mind, or determines the idea
and gives it body. It is informing thought, or cognition. But
take away the psychological or accidental human element, and
in this genuine Thirdness we see the operation of a sign.
  538. Every sign stands for an object independent of itself;
but it can only be a sign of that object in so far as that object is
itself of the nature of a sign or thought. For the sign does not
affect the object but is affected by it; so that the object must
be able to convey thought, that is, must be of the nature of
thought or of a sign. Every thought is a sign. But in the first
degree of degeneracy the Thirdness affects the object, so that
this is not of the nature of a Thirdness -- not so, at least, as far
as this operation of degenerate Thirdness is concerned. It is
that the third brings about a Secondness but does not regard
that Secondness as anything more than a fact. In short it is
the operation of executing an intention. In the last degree of
degeneracy of Thirdness, there is thought, but no conveyance
or embodiment of thought at all. It is merely that a fact of
which there must be, I suppose, something like knowledge is
apprehended according to a possible idea. There is an
instigation without any prompting. For example, you look at
something and say, " It is red. " Well, I ask you what justification
you have for such a judgment. You reply, " I saw it was red. "
Not at all. You saw nothing in the least like that. You saw
an image. There was no subject or predicate in it. It was just
one unseparated image, not resembling a proposition in the
smallest particular. It instigated you to your judgment, owing
to a possibility of thought; but it never told you so. Now in
all imagination and perception there is such an operation by
which thought springs up; and its only justification is that it
subsequently tums out to be useful.
  539. Now it may be that logic ought to be the science of
Thirdness in general. But as I have studied it, it is simply the
science of what must be and ought to be true representation,
so far as representation can be known without any gathering
of special facts beyond our ordinary daily life. It is, in short,
the philosophy of representation.
  540. The analysis which I have just used to give you some
notion of genuine Thirdness and its two forms of degeneracy

|p285

is the merest rough blackboard sketch of the true state of
things; and I must begin the examination of representation by
defining representation a little more accurately. In the first
place, as to my terminology, I confine the word representation
to the operation of a sign or its relation to the object for the
interpreter of the representation. The concrete subject that
represents I call a sign or a representamen. I use these two
words, sign and representamen, differently. By a sign I mean
anything which conveys any definite notion of an object in
any way, as such conveyers of thought are familiarly known
to us. Now I start with this familiar idea and make the best
analysis I can of what is essential to a sign, and I define a
representamen as being whatever that analysis applies to. If
therefore I have committed an error in my analysis, part of
what I say about signs will be false. For in that case a sign
may not be a representamen. The analysis is certainly true of
the representamen, since that is all that word means. Even if
my analysis is correct, something may happen to be true of all
signs, that is of everything that, antecedently to any analysis,
we should be willing to regard as conveying a notion of
anything, while there might be something which my analysis
describes of which the same thing is not true. In particular,
all signs convey notions to human minds; but I know no reason
why every representamen should do so.
541. My definition of a representamen is as follows:
  A REPRESENTAMEN is a subject of a triadic relation TO
a second, called its OBJECT, FOR a third, called its
INTERPRETANT, this triadic relation being such that the
REPRESENTAMEN determines its interpretant to stand in the same
triadic relation to the same object for some interpretant.
  542. It follows at once that this relation cannot consist in
any actual event that ever can have occurred; for in that case
there would be another actual event connecting the
interpretant to an interpretant of its own of which the same would
be true; and thus there would be an endless series of events
which could have actually occurred, which is absurd. For the
same reason the interpretant cannot be a definite individual
object. The relation must therefore consist in a power of the
representamen to determine some interpretant to being a
representamen of the same object.
|p286

  543. Here we make a new distinction. You see the
principle of our procedure. We begin by asking what is the mode
of being of the subject of inquiry, that is, what is its absolute
and most universal Firstness? The answer comes, that it is
either the Firstness of Firstness, the Firstness of Secondness, or
the Firstness of Thirdness.
  We then ask what is the universal Secondness, and what the
universal Thirdness, of the subject in hand.
  Next we say that Firstness of Firstness, that Firstness of
Secondness and that Firstness of Thirdness, that have been
described, have been the Firstness of the Firstness in each case.
But what is the Secondness that is involved in it and what is
the Thirdness?
  So the Secondnesses as they have been first given are the
Firstnesses of those Secondnesses. We ask what Secondness
they involve and what Thirdness. And so we have endless
questions, of which I have only given you small scraps.
  The answers to these questions do not come of themselves.
They require the most laborious study, the most careful and
exact examination. The system of questions does not save that
trouble in the least degree. It enormously increases it by
multiplying the questions that are suggested. But it forces us
along step by step to much clearer conceptions of the objects
of logic than have ever been attained before. The hard fact that
it has yielded such fruit is the principal argument in its favor.
  544. The method has a general similarity to Hegel's. It
would be historically false to call it a modification of Hegel's.
It was brought into being by the study of Kant's categories
and not Hegel's. Hegel's method has the defect of not working
at all if you think with too great exactitude. Moreover, it
presents no such definite question to the mind as this method
does. This method works better the finer and more accurate
the thought. The subtlest mind cannot get the best possible
results from it; but a mind of very moderate skill can make
better analyses by this method than the same mind could
obtain without it, by far.
  Analyses apparently conflicting may be obtained by this
method by different minds, owing to the impossibility of
conforming strictly to the requirements. But it does not follow
that the results are utterly wrong. They will be two imperfect
analyses, each getting a part of the truth.

  591. Every man has certain ideals of the general
description of conduct that befits a rational animal in his particular
station in life, what most accords with his total nature and
relations. If you think this statement too vague, I will say,
more specifically, that there are three ways in which these
ideals usually recommend themselves and justly do so In the
first place certain kinds of conduct, when the man contemplates
them, have an esthetic quality. He thinks that conduct
fine, and though his notion may be coarse or sentimental, yet if so,
it will alter in time and must tend to be brought into harmony
with his nature. At any rate, his taste is his taste for the time
being; that is all. In the second place, the man endeavors to
shape his ideals into consistency with each other, for
inconsistency is odious to him. In the third place, he imagines what
the consequences of fully carrying out his ideals would be, and
asks himself what the esthetic quality of those consequences
would be.
  592. These ideals, however, have in the main been imbibed
in childhood. Still, they have gradually been shaped to his
personal nature and to the ideas of his circle of society rather
by a continuous process of growth than by any distinct acts of
thought. Refiecting upon these ideals, he is led to intend to
make his own conduct conform at least to a part of them -- to
that part in which he thoroughly believes. Next, he usually
formulates, however vaguely, certain rules of conduct. He can
hardly help doing so. Besides, such rules are convenient and
serve to minimize the effects of future inadvertence and, what
are well-named, the wiles of the devil within him. Reflection
upon these rules, as well as upon the general ideals behind them,
has a certain effect upon his disposition, so that what he
naturally inclines to do becomes modified. Such being his condition,

  * From the "Lowell Lectures of 1903," Lecture I, vol. 1, 3d Draught; 611-615
from vol. 2, 2d Draught, which is a continuation of vol. 1, 3d Draught.
|p327

he often foresees that a special occasion is going to arise;
thereupon, a certain gathering of his forces will begin to work
and this working of his being will cause him to consider how he
will act, and in accordance with his disposition, such as it now
is, he is led to form a resolution as to how he will act upon that
occasion. This resolution is of the nature of a plan; or, as one
might almost say, a diagram. It is a mental formula always
more or less general. Being nothing more than an idea, this
resolution does not necessarily influence his conduct. But
now he sits down and goes through a process similar to that of
impressing a lesson upon his memory, the result of which is
that the resolution, or mental formula, is converted into a
determination, by which I mean a really efficient agency, such
that if one knows what its special character is, one can
forecast the man's conduct on the special occasion. One cannot
make forecasts that will come true in the majority of trials of
them by means of any figment. It must be by means of
something true and real.
  593. We do not know by what machinery the conversion
of a resolution into a determination is brought about. Several
hypotheses have been proposed; but they do not much concern
us just now. Suffice it to say that the determination, or
efficient agency, is something hidden in the depths of our nature.
A peculiar quality of feeling accompanies the first steps of the
process of forrning this impression; but later we have no direct
consciousness of it. We may become aware of the disposition,
especially if it is pent up. In that case, we shall recognize it by
a feeling of need, of desire. I must notice that a man does not
always have an opportunity to form a definite resolution
beforehand. But in such cases there are less definite but still
well-marked determinations of his nature growing out of the
general rules of conduct that he has formulated; or in case no
such appropriate rule has been formulated, his ideal of fitting
conduct will have produced some disposition. At length, the
anticipated occasion actually arises.
  594. In order to fix our ideas, let us suppose a case. In the
course of my reflexions, I am led to think that it would be
well for me to talk to a certain person in a certain way. I
resolve that I will do so when we meet. But considering how,
in the heat of conversation, I might be led to take a different
|p328

tone, I proceed to impress the resolution upon my soul; with
the result that when the interview takes place, although my
thoughts are then occupied with the matter of the talk, and
may never revert to my resolution, nevertheless the
determination of my being does influence my conduct. All action
in accordance with a determination is accompanied by a feeling
that is pleasurable; but, whether the feeling at any instant is
felt as pleasurable in that very instant or whether the
recognition of it as pleasurable comes a little later is a question of
fact difficult to make sure about.
  595. The argument tums on the feeling of pleasure, and
therefore it is necessary, in order to judge of it, to get at the
facts about that feeling as accurately as we can. In beginning
to perform any series of acts which had been determined upon
beforehand, there is a certain sense of joy, an anticipation and
commencement of a relaxation of the tension of need, which
we now become more conscious of than we had been before. In
the act itself taking place at any instant, it may be that we
are conscious of pleasure; although that is doubtful. Before
the series of acts are done, we already begin to review them,
and in that review we recognize the pleasurable character of
the feelings that accompanied those acts.
  596. To return to my interview, as soon as it is over I
begin to review it more carefully and I then ask myself whether
my conduct accorded with my resolution. That resolution, as
we agreed, was a mental formula. The memory of my action
may be roughly described as an image. I contemplate that
image and put the question to myself. Shall I say that that
image satisfies the stipulations of my resolution, or not? The
answer to this question, like the answer to any inward
question, is necessarily of the nature of a mental formula. It is
accompanied, however, by a certain quality of feeling which is
related to the formula itself very much as the color of the ink
in which anything is printed is related to the sense of what is
printed. And just as we first become aware of the peculiar
color of the ink and afterward ask ourselves whether it is
agreeable or not, so in formulating the judgment that the image
of our conduct does satisfy our previous resolution we are, in
the very act of formulation, aware of a certain quality of
feeling, the feeling of satisfaction -- and directly afterward
recognize that that feeling was pleasurable.
|p329

  597. But now I may probe deeper into my conduct, and
may ask myself whether it accorded with my general
intentions. Here again there will be a judgment and a feeling
accompanying it, and directly afterward a recognition that
that feeling was pleasurable or painful. This judgment, if
favorable, will probably afford less intense pleasure than the
other; but the feeling of satisfaction which is pleasurable will
be different and, as we say, a deeper feeling.
  598. I may now go still further and ask how the image of
my conduct accords with my ideals of conduct fitting to a man
like me. Here will follow a new judgment with its
accompanying feeling followed by a recognition of the pleasurable or
painful character of that feeling. In any or all of these ways a
man may criticize his own conduct; and it is essential to remark
that it is not mere idle praise or blame such as writers who are
not of the wisest often distribute among the personages of
history. No indeed! It is approval or disapproval of the only
respectable kind, that which will bear fruit in the future.
Whether the man is satisfied with himself or dissatisfied, his
nature will absorb the lesson like a sponge; and the next time
he will tend to do better than he did before.
  599. In addition to these three self-criticisms of single
series of actions, a man will from time to time review his ideals.
This process is not a job that a man sits down to do and has
done with. The experience of life is continually contributing
instances more or less illuminative. These are digested first,
not in the man's consciousness, but in the depths of his
reasonable being. The results come to consciousness later. But
meditation seems to agitate a mass of tendencies and allow
them more quickly to settle down so as to be really more
conformed to what is fit for the man.
  600. Finally, in addition to this personal meditation on
the fitness of one's own ideals, which is of a practical nature,
there are the purely theoretical studies of the student of ethics
who seeks to ascertain, as a matter of curiosity, what the
fitness of an ideal of conduct consists in, and to deduce from
such definition of fitness what conduct ought to be. Opinions
differ as to the wholesomeness of this study. It only concems
our present purpose to remark that it is in itself a purely
theoretical inquiry, entirely distinct from the business of
|p330

shaping one's own conduct. Provided that feature of it be not
lost sight of, I myself have no doubt that the study is more or
less favorable to right living.
  601. I have thus endeavored to describe fully the typical
phenomena of controlled action. They are not every one present
in every case. Thus, as I have akeady mentioned, there is not
always an opportunity to form a resolution. I have specially
emphasized the fact that conduct is determined by what
precedes it in time, while the recognition of the pleasure it brings
follows after the action. Some may opine that this is not true
of what is called the pursuit of pleasure; and I admit that there
is room for their opinion while I myself incline to think, for
example, that the satisfaction of eating a good dinner is never
a satisfaction in the present instantaneous state, but always
follows after it. I insist, at any rate, that a feeling, as a mere
appearance, can have no real power in itself to produce any
effect whatever, however indirectly.
  602. My account of the facts, you will observe, leaves a
man at full liberty, no matter if we grant all that the
necessitarians ask. That is, the man can, or if you please is compelled,
to make his life more reasonable. What other distinct idea than
that, I should be glad to know, can be attached to the word
liberty?
  603. Now let us compare the facts I have stated with the
argument I am opposing. That argument rests on two main
premisses; first, that it is unthinkable that a man should act
from any other motive than pleasure, if his act be deliberate;
and second, that action with reference to pleasure leaves no
room for any distinction of right and wrong.
  604. Let us consider whether this second premiss is really
true. What would be requisite in order to destroy the
difference between innocent and guilty conduct? The one thing
that would do it would be to destroy the faculty of effective
self-criticism. As long as that remained, as long as a man
compared his conduct with a preconceived standard and that
effectively, it need not make much difference if his only real
motive were pleasure; for it would become disagreeable to him
to incur the sting of conscience. But those who deluded
themselves with that fallacy were so inattentive to the phenomena
|p331

that they confused the judgment, after the act, that that act
satisfied or did not satisfy the requirements of a standard, with
a pleasure or pain accompanying the act itself.
  605. Let us now consider whether the other premiss is
true, that it is unthinkable that a man should act deliberately
except for the sake of pleasure. What is the element which it
is in truth unthinkable that deliberate action should lack?
It is simply and solely the deterrnination. Let his
determination remain, as it is certainly conceivable that it should remain,
although the very nerve of pleasure were cut so that the man
were perfectly insensible to pleasure and pain, and he will
certainly pursue the line of conduct upon which he is intent.
The only effect would be to render the man's intentions more
inflexible -- an effect, by the way, which we often have
occasion to observe in men whose feelings are almost deadened by
age or by some derangement of the brain. But those who have
reasoned in this fallacious way have confounded together the
deterrnination of the man's nature, which is an efficient agency
prepared previously to the act, with the comparison of conduct
with a standard, which comparison is a general mental formula
subsequent to the act, and, having identified these two utterly
different things, placed them in the act itself as a mere quality
of feeling.
  606. Now if we recur to the defendant argument about
reasoning, we shall find that it involves the same sort of tangle
of ideas. The phenomena of reasoning are, in their general
features, parallel to those of moral conduct. For reasoning is
essentially thought that is under self-control, just as moral
conduct is conduct under self-control. Indeed reasoning is
a species of controlled conduct and as such necessarily partakes
of the essential features of controlled conduct. If you attend
to the phenomena of reasoning, although they are not quite so
familiar to you as those of morals because there are no
clergymen whose business it is to keep them before your minds, you
will nevertheless remark, without difficulty, that a person who
draws a rational conclusion, not only thinks it to be true, but
thinks that similar reasoning would be just in every analogous
case. If he fails to think this, the inference is not to be called
reasoning. It is merely an idea suggested to his mind and which
he cannot resist thinking is true. But not having been
|p332

subjected to any check or control, it is not deliberately approved
and is not to be called reasoning. To call it so would be to
ignore a distinction which it ill becomes a rational being to
overlook. To be sure, every inference forces itself upon us
irresistibly. That is to say, it is irresistible at the instant it
first suggests itself. Nevertheless, we all have in our minds
certain norms, or general patterns of right reasoning, and we
can compare the inference with one of those and ask ourselves
whether it satisfies that rule. I call it a rule, although the
formulation may be somewhat vague; because it has the essential
character of a rule of being a general formula applicable to
particular cases. If we judge our norm of right reason to be
satisfied, we get a feeling of approval, and the inference now
not only appears as irresistible as it did before, but it will
prove far more unshakable by any doubt.
  607. You see at once that we have here all the main
elements of moral conduct; the general standard mentally
conceived beforehand, the efficient agency in the inward nature,
the act, the subsequent comparison of the act with the
standard. Examining the phenomena more closely we shall find
that not a single element of moral conduct is unrepresented in
reasoning. At the same time, the special case naturally has its
peculiarities.
  608. Thus, we have a general ideal of sound logic. But we
should not naturally describe it as our idea of the kind of
reasoning that befits men in our situation. How should we
describe it? How if we were to say that sound reasoning is
such reasoning that in every conceivable state of the universe
in which the facts stated in the premisses are true, the fact
stated in the conclusion will thereby and therein be true. The
objection to this statement is that it only covers necessary
reasoning, including reasoning about chances. There is other
reasoning which is defensible as probable, in the sense that
while the conclusion may be more or less erroneous, yet the
same procedure diligently persisted in must, in every
conceivable universe in which it leads to any result at all, lead to
a result indefinitely approximating to the truth. When that
is the case, we shall do right to pursue that method, provided
we recognize its true character, since our relation to the
universe does not perrnit us to have any necessary knowledge of
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positive facts. You will observe that in such a case our ideal is
shaped by the consideration of our situation relatively to the
universe of existences. There are still other operations of the
mind to which the name " reasoning " is especially appropriate,
although it is not the prevailing habit of speech to call them so.
They are conjectures, but rational conjectures; and the
justification of them is that unless a man had a tendency to guess
right, unless his guesses are better than tossing up a copper,
no truth that he does not already virtually possess could ever
be disclosed to him, so that he might as well give up all attempt
to reason; while if he has any decided tendency to guess right,
as he may have, then no matter how often he guesses wrong,
he will get at the truth at last. These considerations certainly
do take into account the man's inward nature as well as his
outward relations; so that the ideals of good logic are truly of
the same general nature as ideals of fine conduct. We saw that
three kinds of considerations go to support ideals of conduct.
They were, first, that certain conduct seems fine in itself. Just
so certain conjectures seem likely and easy in themselves.
Secondly, we wish our conduct to be consistent. Just so the
ideal [of] necessary reasoning is consistency simply. Third, we
consider what the general effect would be of thoroughly
carrying out our ideals. Just so certain ways of reasoning
recommend themselves because if persistently carried out they must
lead to the truth. The parallelism, you perceive, is almost
exact.
  609. There is also such a thing as a general logical
intention. But it is not emphasized for the reason that the will does
not enter so violently into reasoning as it does into moral
conduct. I have already mentioned the logical norms, which
correspond to moral laws. In taking up any difficult problem
of reasoning we formulate to ourselves a logical resolution;
but here again, because the will is not at such high tension in
reasoning as it often is in self-controlled conduct, these
resolutions are not very prominent phenomena. Owing to this
circumstance, the efficient determination of our nature, which
causes us to reason in each case as we do, has less relation to
resolutions than to logical norms. The act itself is, at the
instant, irresistible in both cases. But immediately after, it is
subjected to self-criticism by comparison with a previous
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standard nhich is always the norm, or rule, in the case of
reasoning, although in the case of outward conduct we are
too often content to compare the act with the resolution. In
the case of general conduct, the lesson of satisfaction or
dissatisfaction is frequently not much taken to heart and little
influences future conduct. But in the case of reasoning an
inference which self-criticism disapproves is always instantly
annulled, because there is no difficulty in doing this. Finally,
all the different feelings which, as we noticed, accompanied the
different operations of self-controlled conduct equally
accompany those of reasoning, although they are not quite so vivid.
  610. The parallelism is thus perfect. Nor, I repeat, could
it fail to be so, if our description of the phenomena of controlled
conduct was true, since reasoning is only a special kind of
controlled conduct.
  611. What does right reasoning consist in? It consists in
such reasoning as shall be conducive to our ultimate aim.
What, then, is our ultimate aim? Perhaps it is not necessary
that the logician should answer this question. Perhaps it
might be possible to deduce the correct rules of reasoning from
the mere assumption that we have some ultimate aim. But I
cannot see how this could be done. If we had, for example, no
other aim than the pleasure of the moment, we should fall
back into the same absence of any logic that the fallacious
argument would lead to. We should have no ideal of reasoning,
and consequently no norm. It seems to me that the logician
ought to recognize what our ultimate aim is. It would seem
to be the business of the moralist to find this out, and that the
logician has to accept the teaching of ethics in this regard.
But the moralist, as far as I can make it out, merely tells us
that we have a power of self-control, that no narrow or selfish
aim can ever prove satisfactory, that the only satisfactory aim
is the broadest, highest, and most general possible aim; and
for any more definite information, as I conceive the matter, he
has to refer us to the esthetician, whose business it is to say
what is the state of things which is most admirable in itself
regardless of any ulterior reason.
  612. So, then, we appeal to the esthete to tell us what it
is that is admirable without any reason for being admirable
beyond its inherent character. Why, that, he replies, is the
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beautiful. Yes, we urge, such is the name that you give to it,
but what is it? What is this character? If he replies that it
consists in a certain quality of feeling, a certain bliss, I for one
decline altogether to accept the answer as sufficient. I should
say to him, My dear Sir, if you can prove to me that this
quality of feeling that you speak of does, as a fact, attach to
what you call the beautiful, or that which would be admirable
without any reason for being so, I am willing enough to believe
you; but I cannot without strenuous proof admit that any
particular quality of feeling is admirable without a reason.
For it is too revolting to be believed unless one is forced to
believe it.
  613. A fundamental question like this, however practical
the issues of it may be, differs entirely from any ordinary
practical question, in that whatever is accepted as good in
itself must be accepted without compromise. In deciding any
special question of conduct it is often quite right to allow weight
to different confiicting considerations and calculate their
resultant. But it is quite different in regard to that which is
to be the aim of all endeavor. The object admirable that is
admirable per se must, no doubt, be general. Every ideal is
more or less general. It may be a complicated state of things.
But it must be a single ideal; it must have unity, because it is
an idea, and unity is essential to every idea and every ideal.
Objects of utterly disparate kinds may, no doubt, be
admirable, because some special reason may make each one of them
so. But when it comes to the ideal of the admirable, in itself,
the very nature of its being is to be a precise idea; and if
somebody tells me it is either this, or that, or that other, I
say to him, It is clear you have no idea of what precisely it is.
But an ideal must be capable of being embraced in a unitary
idea, or it is no ideal at all. Therefore, there can be no
compromises between different considerations here. The admirable
ideal cannot be too extremely admirable. The more thoroughly
it has whatever character is essential to it, the more admirable
it must be.
  614. Now what would the doctrine that that which is
admirable in itself is a quality of feeling come to if taken in
all its purity and carried to its furthest extreme -- which
should be the extreme of admirableness? It would amount to
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saying that the one ultimately admirable object is the
unrestrained gratification of a desire, regardless of what the nature
of that desire may be. Now that is too shocking. It would be
the doctrine that all the higher modes of consciousness with
which we are acquainted in ourselves, such as love and reason,
are good only so far as they subserve the lowest of all modes of
consciousness. It would be the doctrine that this vast universe
of Nature which we contemplate with such awe is good only to
produce a certain quality of feeling. Certainly, I must be
excused for not admitting that doctrine unless it be proved with
the utmost evidence. So, then, what proof is there that it is
true? The only reason for it that I have been able to leam is
that gratification, pleasure, is the only conceivable result that
is satisfied with itself; and therefore, since we are seeking for
that which is fine and admirable without any reason beyond
itself, pleasure, bliss, is the only object which can satisfy the
conditions. This is a respectable argument. It deserves
consideration. Its premiss, that pleasure is the only conceivable
result that is perfectly self-satisfied, must be granted. Only,
in these days of evolutionary ideas which are traceable to the
French Revolution as their instigator, and still further back to
Galileo's experiment at the leaning tower of Pisa, and still
further back to all the stands that have been made by Luther
and even by Robert of Lincoln against attempts to bind down
human reason to any prescriptions fixed in advance -- in
these days, I say, when these ideas of progress and growth
have themselves grown up so as to occupy our minds as they
now do, how can we be expected to allow the assumption to
pass that the admirable in itself is any stationary result? The
explanation of the circumstance that the only result that is
satisfied with itself is a quality of feeling is that reason always
looks forward to an endless future and expects endlessly to
improve its results.
  615. Consider, for a moment, what Reason, as well as we
can today conceive it, really is. I do not mean man's faculty
which is so called from its embodying in some measure Reason,
or Nous, as a something manifesting itself in the mind, in the
history of mind's development, and in nature. What is this
Reason? In the first place, it is something that never can have
been completely embodied. The most insignificant of general|p337

ideas always involves conditional predictions or requires for
its fulfillment that events should come to pass, an-d all that
ever can have come to pass must fall short of completely
fulfilling its requirements. A little example will serve to illustrate
what I am saying. Take any general term whatever. I say of
a stone that it is hard. That means that so long as the stone
remains hard, every essay to scratch it by the moderate
pressure of a knife will surely fail. To call the stone hard is to
predict that no matter how often you try the experiment, it will
fail every time. That innumerable series of conditional
predictions is involved in the meaning of this lowly adjective.
Whatever may have been done will not begin to exhaust its meaning.
At the same time, the very being of the General, of Reason, is
of such a mode that this being consists in the Reason's actually
governing events. Suppose a piece of carborundum has been
made and has subsequently been dissolved in aqua regia
without anybody at any time, so far as I know, ever having tried
to scratch it with a knife. Undoubtedly, I may have good
reason, nevertheless, to call it hard; because some actual fact
has occurred such that Reason compels me to call it so, and a
general idea of all the facts of the case can only be formed if I
do call it so. In this case, my calling it hard is an actual event
which is governed by that law of hardness of the piece of
carborundum. But if there were no actual fact whatsoever which
was meant by saying that the piece of carborundum was hard,
there would be not the slightest meaning in the word hard as
applied to it. The very being of the General, of Reason, consists
in its goveming individual events. So, then, the essence of
Reason is such that its being never can have been completely
perfected. It always must be in a state of incipiency, of growth.
It is like the character of a man which consists in the ideas
that he will conceive and in the efforts that he will make, and
which only develops as the occasions actually arise. Yet in
all his life long no son of Adam has ever fully manifested what
there was in him. So, then, the development of Reason requires
as a part of it the occurrence of more individual events than
ever can occur. It requires, too, all the coloring of all qualities
of feeling, including pleasure in its proper place among the
rest. This development of Reason consists, you will observe, in
embodiment, that is, in manifestation. The creation of the
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universe, which did not take place during a certain busy week,
in e year 4004 B.C., but is going on today and never will be
done, Is this very developement of Reason. I do not see how
one can have a more satisfying ideal of the admirable than the
development of Reason so understood. The one thing whose
admirableness is not due to an ulterior reason is Reason itself
comprehended in all its fullness, so far as we can comprehend
it. Under thus conception, the ideal of conduct will be to
execute our little function in the operation of the creation by
giving a hand toward rendering the world more reasonable
w enever, as the slang is, it is "up to us" to do so. In logic, it
will be observed that knowledge is reasonableness; and the
ideal of reasoning will be to follow such methods as must
develope knowledge the most speedily....