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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 reasoning 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 manifestation is the idea of a sign. Now a sign is something, A, which signifies denotes some fact or object, B, to some interpretant thought, C.
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
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of three tails each will suffice to build graphs with every higher number of tails. [diagram] Consequently It is, therefore, not 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 these three elements of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, there is nothing else to be found in the phenomenon.
As to the common aversion to recognizing thought as an active factor in the real world,
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I could throw great light upon it, if I could spare a few moments it would be a matter of extreme interest, as well as highly advantageous for undersstanding the instructive to dwell upon it for a few subject of reasoning. But the miserable brevity of this course forces me to cut off everything that is not dry and abstract.
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
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that. They only say how bodies will move after you have said what the forces are. They permit almost any forces, and therefore any motions. Only, the principle of the conservation of energy forces requires us to explain certain kinds of motions by special hypotheses about molecules and the like. Thus, in order that friction and 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. 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
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law of evolution? Each hereditary character is a law, but it is subject to development 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 influence 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.
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;