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element; and accordingly we find two kinds of what has the form of facts, real facts and fictions. Real facts subdivide, not, you will observe, merely materially, or according to the matter they relate to, but formally or in their nature as facts, into physical hard facts, not directly controllable, and facts of volition which are what we call ‘free,’ meaning directly controllable by the power of self-control. Hard facts are again divisible into those of the external real things and facts of sensation. Now let us pass to the consideration of law. The predominant element in law, or uniformity, is Thirdness; and accordingly we find a trichotomic division into normative laws, which determine what ideally, or in reason, should be; compulsive laws, which determine how facts must take place;
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a great explosion of nitroglycerine before one had recovered oneself and merely had the sense of the breaking off of the quiet. Perhaps it might not be far from what ordinary common sense conceives to take place when one billiard ball caroms on another. One ball “acts” on the other; that is, it makes an exertion minus the element of representation. We may say with sufficient some approach to accuracy that the general Firstness of all true Secondness is Existence, though this term more particularly applies to Secondness in so far as it is an element of the reacting First and Second. If we
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and uniformities of classification, which determine the connections of qualities. Subdivision of the first class should, by the rule, be trichotomic, that of the second dichotomic, and that of the third merely according to the subjects to which the laws apply. Accordingly, normative laws are found to be either logical, relating to what thought should in reason be, ethical, relating to what conduct should ideally be, and esthetical, relating to what qualities of works of art should ideally be; and although this sounds like a mere material division yet the characters of the three kinds of laws, as laws, are essentially different. Compulsive laws divide by dichotomy into purely Physical laws and Psychological laws. These have very different characters
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mean Secondness as it is an element of the occurrence, the Firstness of it is Actuality. But actuality and existence are words expressing the same idea in different applications. Secondness, strictly speaking, is just when and where it takes place, and has no other being; and therefore different Secondnesses, strictly speaking, have in themselves no quality in common. Accordingly existence, or the universal Firstness of all Secondness, is really not a quality at all. An actual dollar to your credit in the bank does not differ in any respect from a possible imaginary dollar. For if it did, the imaginary dollar could be supposed imagined to be changed in that respect, so as to agree with the actual dollar. We thus see that actuality is not a quality, or mere mode of feeling. Hence Hegel whose neglect of Secondness was due
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as laws. For the purely physical laws are of this nature that they determine accelerations, that is to say what the position of a particle shall be at a given instant relatively to its positions at two instants indefinitely near to the instant in question; while physiological laws, that is to say, habits and heredities, simply determine that the event (usually a complex event) of one time shall be like the event of a previous time (usually long previous.) There is also another great difference between these laws which the majority of those whose opinions are of weight believe to be merely apparent, but which I believe to be real. It is that the purely physical laws are absolutely compulsive, while the physiological laws are