Knowledge is that which we get empirically but Wisdom is wrought by the unfolding of the mind (W 1: 4)··· If Knowledge is first (analogous to empirical conceptions) and Wisdom is second (analogous to pure conceptions), then what could be third?
a third impulse [is] the result of the perfect balance of the other two (W 1: 11)··· In his defense of Schiller, the harmony of two contrary impulses results in a third.
Since his later categories emerge out of these protean ones, I'll present them in the order I see them at the moment, though there may not be universal assent as to the order they should be in. Part of the problem here is Peirce's unique take on firstness, which is matter instead of body - perhaps due to his reading of Locke, with the latter's (material) body, as in physics.
or that which says IT | or that which says THOU | or that which says I |
The next such case are Peirce's variations upon Kant's categories of quality, or inversion of them. These deserve to be brought out because they inform his later triads to a certain degree.
I call these successive and not retrogressive or contemporaneous because they are stages towards perfection (W 1: 38)··· We'll be returning to Perfection later on; for now it is sufficient to bear in mind that it is reached from nullity through Positivity.
in the third place we can combine one conception with the other (W 1: 41)··· Though the context is an esoteric Kantian discussion of infinity, in which he illustrates the subject ("man") and predicate ("good") through different modalities, in his terms degrees of "influxual dependency":
Note the analogy with nullity, Positivity and Perfection, above. The next one is another take on I, IT, and THOU in which I'll have to rearrange it along Chaseian lines, for while it is appealing to place I qua Intellect as third, because the Intellectual is usually third, it may very well be the case that this I is of the soul, hence second, and the Peircean third is a "universal mind", i.e. THOU. This is hinted, I think, with that cryptic "THOU is an IT in which there is another I". Let's break his paragraph (W 1: 45) into our table:
Now, the first line is reasonable to a degree: sensation is "looking out", understanding is "looking in". THOU is, as a third, naturally a certain "harmony" between these two. The second line confirms this by THOU "commingling". Here, IT "inflows" as sense impressions (ipmulses), and I "outwells" as from a person's soul. The last line is thoroughly cryptic - I cannot as of yet decide its meaning. It is at least clear that the same logic is at play - leaning and supporting, and a mixture of these two (simultaneity). Though what is meant by "staff" and what what is leaned on or supported, I do not know. Things get a bit clearer in "The Modus of the IT", where Peirce presents "three Celestial Worlds" (cf. W 1: 47):
These are metaphorically, I presume, "Celestial Worlds": the first is "a speck" (a fleeting unity), the second is "extensive manifestation" and the third an "immense manifestation", these adjective presumably being significant, perhaps related as finite and infinite. Keep in mind, also, that these three "worlds" conform to Possibility, Reality, and Necessity. Another take on Unity, Plurality, and Totality (W 1: 48-49):
mere point elementariness | extension | immensity |
In the next instance, which treats of three types of immense manifestations, he has yet to place space and time where they end up later on:
The curious part about this, aside from the positions of space and time, is the third being "Heaven" - another instance in which his Thirdness has something to do with God.
the fundamental distinction of psychology is between the soul and the body (W 1: 61)··· He adds that "this is a metaphysical distinction".
then we have three worlds [..] mutually excluding and including each other (W 1: 83)··· This language shows that these are IT, I, and THOU (now in this order) renamed. For comparison: "The IT of the I contains nothing which either the I of the I contains, nor which the THOU of the I contains. Nor have these anything in common with each other." (W 1: 46).
the latter must itself be the culmination of the former (W 1: 110)··· In this piece of writing, the order is again messed up, the "inward revelation" preceding the "objective revelation". What it says is that the objective revelation is the culmination of the inward revelation. This is formalized later on (W 1: 113) into neologisms:
Physics will have made us familiar with the body of all things, and the unity of the body of all (W 1: 114)··· This "body" is not primarily the human body, but any (material) body.
natural history will have shown us the soul of all things in their infinite and amiable idiosyncrasies (W 1: 114)··· Likewise, the "soul" is not primarily the human soul, but "the soul of all things".
The inner and the outer worlds as represented in common opinion and even sometimes by philosophers are two completely separated experiences, as distinct as two chambers; but this representation is a metaphysical fiction (W 1: 167)··· The division between Matter, Mind, and God on the whole is "a metaphysical fiction".
Breaking up that long multi-page paragraph is difficult, but here I'd like to take an experimental approach and add to the items he lists there the polemic he writes to Chase about, concerning images, particularly the metaphysical opposition:
the inner and outer worlds are superposed throughout (W 1: 168)··· Commixture, culmination, throughness. His explanation of this this third, superposed world, is what will in all likelihood end up in the paper I'm writing:
Taking it for granted, then, that the inner and outer worlds are superposed throughout, without possibility of separation, let us now proceed to another point. There is a third world, besides the inner and the outer; and all three are coëtensive and contain every experience. Suppose that we have an experience. That experience has three determinations - three different references to a substratum or substrata, lying behind it and determining it. In the first place, it is a determination of an object external to ourselves - we feel that it is so because it is extended in space. Thereby it is in the external world. In the the second place, it is a determination of our own soul, it is our experience; we feel that it is so because it lasts in time. Were it a flash of sensation, there for less than an instant, and then utterly gone from memory, we should not have time to think it ours. But while it lasts, and we reflect upon it, it enters into the internal world. We have now considered that experience as a determination of the modifying object and of the modified soul; now, I say, it may be and is naturally regarded as also a determination of an idea of the Universal Mind; a preëxistent, archetypal Idea. Arithmetic, the law of number, was before anything to be numbered or any mind to number had been created. It was though it did not exist. It was not a fact nor a thought, but it was an unuttered word. (W 1: 168-169)
The word horse, is though of as being a word though it be unwritten, unsaid, and unthought (W 1: 169)··· The word itself is a Type. His argument now makes sense: logic should be unpsychological because it is beyond the distinction between inward and outward (matter and mind) - logic deals with universals, in a sense. Peirce's logic is metaphysical. Or, as he himself puts it: "logic is the science of representations in general, whether mental or material" (ibid, 169). A related point, on these being metaphysical distinctions:
they say they do not believe these hypotheses as facts in themselves but only so far as they do bring the facts to a unity (W 1: 159)··· These metaphysical distinctions (Matter, Mind, and God; metaphysical matter, soul, and logos) are devices.
the idea is regarded as belonging to mind in general, to a universal mind, and that words are considered, however obscurely, as determinations of the pure idea (W 1: 172)··· Ideas and Universal Mind are both Thirds.
we do not have to reflect upon the word as a sign but that it comes to affect the intellect as though it had that quality which it connotes (W 1: 172)··· Understanding words is spontaneous: "the word itself without any reflection of ours upon it brings the idea into our minds" (ibid, 172).
'All men', in logic, means man in general. (W 1: 178)··· Universal Mind means the minds of men in general.
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