MS 464-465 (1903) - Lowell Lecture III - 3rd Draught

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be given of the phenomena of the universe while 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, “Don't deny what is manifest “Don't permit your intellectual predilections to make you blind to what is manifest. For this is the very sentiment that is “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 harmony conformity of his thoughts to his purposes. But you know there is such a thing as a defect

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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.” 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. Long Considerable reflexion will may be required to convince yourself of the first of these premisses, that every triadic

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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 defined 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 active substances. They are all of such complex constitution that they cannot have existed when the

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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, and 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 datestone which hit the Jinn 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

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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.

The other premiss of the argument that genuine triadic relations can never be built of dyadic relations and of reference 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 branching line of iden 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