<pb n=13 id=Peirce12>all modern philosophy of every sect has been nominalistic. For a long notice of Frazer’s Berkeley, in the North American Review for October 1871, I declared for realism. I have since very carefully and thoroughly revised my philosophical opinions more than half a dozen times, and have modified them more or less on most topics; but I have never been able to think differently on that question of nominalism and realism. In that paper I acknowledged that the tendency of science has been toward nominalism; but the late Dr. Francis Ellingwood Abbot in the very remarkable introduction to his book entitled ‘Scientific Theism’, showed on the con-<pb n=14 id=Peirce13>trary, quite conclusively, that science has always been at heart Realistic, and always must be so; and upon comparing his writings with mine, it is easily seen that these features of nominalism which I pointed out in science are merely superficial and transient.

The heart of the dispute lies in this. The modern philosophers,--one and all, unless Schelling be an exception,--recognize but one mode of being, the being of an individual thing or fact, the being which consists in the object’s crowding out a place for itself in the universe, so to speak, and reacting by brute force of fact, against all other things. I call that <pb n=15 id=Peirce14> Existence. Aristotle on the other hand whose system, like all the greatest systems, was evolutionary, recognized besides an embryonic kind of being, like the being of a tree in its seed, or like the being of a future contingent event, depending on how a man shall decide to act. In a few passages Aristotle seems to have a dim aperçie of a third mode of being in the entelechy. The embryonic being for Aristotle was the being he called Matter, which is alike in all things, and which in the course of its development took on Form. Form is an element having a different mode of being. The whole philosophy of the scholastic doctors is an attempt <pb n=16 id=Peirce15> to mould this doctrine of Aristotle into harmony with christian truth. This harmony the different doctors attempted to bring about in different ways. But all the realists agree in reversing the order of Aristotle’s evolution by making the Form come first, and the Individuation of that form come later. Thus they too recognized two modes of being; but they were not the two modes of being of Aristotle.

My view is that there are three modes of being. I hold that we can directly observe them in elements of whatever is at any time before the mind in any way. They are the being <pb n=17 id=Peirce16> of positive qualitative possibility, the being of actual fact, and the being of law that will govern facts in the future.

Let us begin with considering actuality, and try to make out just what it consists in. If I ask you what the actuality of an event consists in, you will tell me that it consists in its happening then and there. The specifications then and there involve all its relations to other existents. The actuality of the event seems to be in its relations to the universe of existents. A court may issue injunctions and judgments against me & I care not a snap of my finger for them & I may think them idle paper. But when I feel the sheriff’s hand on my shoulder, I shall begin to have a sense of <pb n=18 id=Peirce17> actuality. Actuality is something brute. There is no reason in it. I[?] instanced putting your shoulder against a door & trying to force it open against an unseen, silent, and unknown resistance. We have a two sided consciousness of effort and resistance, which seems to me to come tolerably near to a pure sense of actuality. On the whole, I think we have here a mode of being of one thing which consists in how a second object is. I call that Secondness.

Besides this, there are two modes of being that I call Firstness & Thirdness. Firstness is the mode of being which consists in its subjects being positively such as it is regardless <pb n=19 id=Peirce18> of aught else. That can only be a possibility. For as long as things do not act upon one another there is no sense or meaning in saying that they have any being, unless it be that they are such in themselves that they may perhaps come into relation with others. The mode of being a redness, before anything in the universe way yet red, was nevertheless a positive qualitative possibility. And redness in itself even if it be embodied is something positive and sui generis. That I call firstness. We naturally attribute Firstness to outward objects, that is we suppose they have capacities in themselves which may or may <pb n=20 id=Peiece19> not be already actualized, which may or may not ever be actualized, although we can know nothing of such possibilities so far as they are actualized [sic].

Now for Thirdness. Five minutes of our waking life will hardly pass without our making some kind of prediction; and in the majority of cases these predictions are fulfilled in the event. Yet a prediction is essentially of a general nature, and cannot ever be completely fulfilled. To say that a prediction has a decided tendency to be fulfilled, is to say that the future events are in a measure really governed by a law. If a pair of dice turns up sixes five <pb n=21 id=Peirce20> times running, that is a mere uniformity. The dice might happen fortuitously to turn up sixes a thousand times running. But that would not afford the slightest security for a prediction that they would turn up sixes the next time. If the prediction has a tendency to be fulfilled, it must be that future events have a tendency to conform to a general rule. ‘Oh,’ but say the Nominalists, ‘this general rule is nothing but a mere word or complex of words!’ I reply, Nobody ever dreamed of denying that what is general is of the nature of a general sign; but the question is whether future events will conform to it or not. If they will, your adjective ‘mere’ seems to be ill-placed. A rule to which future events have a tendency to conform <pb n=22 id=Peirce21> is ipso facto an important thing, an important element in the happenings of those events. This mode of being which consists, mind my word if you please, the mode of being which consists in the fact that future facts of Secondness will take on a determinate general character, I call a Thirdness.

Now Lecture III vol 1 p 56 to p 70 in Vol 2.

Next define the sign and the three trichotomies.

The peculiarity of gamma graphs is that they make abstractions, or mere possibilities as well as laws the subjects of discourse. <insert id=Peirce21v> I have been in the habit defining an abstraction or ens rationis as something whose being consists in the truth of a proposition concerning something else. The definition is not exact; but it will answer tolerably [about 10 characters, near illegible]. If the proposition is that some description of things is possible, this is a roundabout way of describing a Firstness. If the proposition is that something always will be, it describes a thirdness. <pb n=22v>The difficulty lies in the nature of a dicisign.</insert> Now the subject of a proposition is necessarily an individual or in relative propositions a set of <pb n=23 id=Peirce22> individuals, in this sense, that when I say ‘All crows are black,’ I may be understood to mean ‘Select any crow you like and that crow is black.’

But how can a law which is essentially general, which must relate to more than experience ever can cover or it is not a general rule at all, how can this be the subject of a proposition?