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

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a critical and depreciatory attitude toward [my?] doctrine. In fact, I have done that with everything I have printed. Then, after some years, I reëxamined the subject and became more confident than before of the substantial truth of my original statement. I thus alternated periods in which I endeavored to develope my doctrine with periods in which I emdeavored to destroy it for many years, until I finally quite ceased to doubt. That was a good many years ago; and since then, I have devoted a large part of my study to improving the doctrine. But with me this is very slow work; for I require the thought to be exact and strong. I tell you these things in order to persuade you that the subject is worth a good deal of thought. If I could only induce

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show no signs of belonging 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.

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 I 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,

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another mind person of sufficient natural aptitude to train himself to this work, he would discover bring to light truths which I have not been able to discover.

There are a few comments upon the Categories that I had better add, because they will be pertinent to questions that will come before us.

I have already shown you that this list of categories is complete, and that there is no Fourhtness, as a distinct element. But I have never said nor thought that this list of categories is the only list. On the contrary, it has always appeared to me that there must be at least one other; and I have given much time to attempts to make out the others. But I have nothing to communicate about them, being

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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 it to be. That is, the being a Second involves Secondness. The Reaction still more manifestly involves the being what an other 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.

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,

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desirous that the little I publish should be of genuine value.

I have spoken of two peculiar modes of consciousness, the consciousness of Reaction in Volition and in Perception, as Secondness par excellence. But, in truth, all consciousness is ipso facto Secondness. I have sometimes called Qualities of Feeling immediate consciousness; but this immediate consciousness is a fiction of the psychologists. Consider my the your memory or imagination of a red color. You may have a very dim imagination of a brilliant scarlet. You may have an intensely vivid imagination of an ashes of roses color, which is a or very dull reddish grey. The vividness or dimness of the image does not affect the quality. The

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