MS 611-15

1908 Nov 9 Logic 19

comes to us through experience, and this experience takes the form of sensations arising, as it appears to us, from excitations of our different afferent nerves. I do not care whether this be a deceptive appearance or not. It seems to me that, in any case, every such sensation is merely the access of that kind of awareness that we call a feeling. Now my object is that every feeling is in itself entirely simple. I will present one argument at a time in support of this assertion. If you succeed in refuting it, I will offer another; and if you refute that I shall have still another; and we shall see whether my arguments or your refutations become exhausted first. You certainly cannot admit what everyone of these arguments seems to prove without renouncing what you have just said, to wit, that you were ever 'directly aware' of Etna, since

1908 Nov 9 Logic 20

Etna is large, and therefore has parts; so that the awareness of it cannot be a feeling, but is, on the contrary, derived from a synthesis of many feelings, which are the 'signs,' as you call them, of Etna; so, as I said, you are not 'directly aware of' Etna, and never were.

I. Upon my word, what you say seems quite true. It is true; and I am dumbfounded. Give me a few moments to think how I shall wriggle out of my dilemma.

You. Mr. Peirce, lend me your ear: I am entitled to it and you shall listen to what I have to say. I came to you because I am suffering from the most dreadful of human maladies, ignorance of reason, and because you profess to exercise a medicina mentis of exceptional power. It

1908 Nov 10 Logic 21

never occurred to me that my physician would jeer at my complaint. Yes, you do: that is just what you are doing, when you talk of if my objection had taken you by surprise. Haven't you written this book, and was it not you that put the objection into my mouth, and then made believe to be surprised at is force, merely in order to render your triumph over it more striking. What am I, at all, but a puppet of your fabrication,-a puppet cat with whose paw you delight to pull your hot chestnuts out much less for the poor nutrient they afford than for the cruel sport of forcing me to take them. But let me tell you that when you created me, you overreached yourself in one particular. For when you manufactured me, in order

1908 Nov 10 Logic 22

to make my motions ape life more perfectly, you cleverly introduced a principle into my make up whereby every one of them without exception is subjected to an automatic motion of regulation, giving that critical effect you speak of, and of course each such motion of the automatic regulator is, by the same principle itself controlled in the same manner by another motion. It was the circumstance that my being is merely the being of an idea,--something consisting in a capability of being represented independently of whether or not has a capacity for representing it, that made it possible, and easy too, for my creator to introduce that principle into my constitution. By this endowment, although I am absolutely subject to all your freaks, yet my consistent

1908 Nov 10 Logic 23

appeals to your reason may turn out as important in the end. The endowment constitutes what obese unwieldy intelligences call "free-will," what Prince Siddártha came to know as as nirvána and emancipation from existence, and what you call my icy, hard, and passionless temper of criticism. I criticize your creation of me, and the whole method of throwing philosophical discussion into the form of dialogue. For a philosopher ought above all things to be sincere and to say just what he means. Now a philosophical dialogue is always a make-believe lower than play-acting. It is just a puppet show, in which Punch knocks Judy and the policeman and all the rest of the wooden things over the head, and then makes fun of all his lawless doings and of all his victims. I. Well, well, there was plenty of latent heat in the cold steel.