HOW PEIRCE SAW IT ALL

CP. 1.614. "Now what would the doctrine that that which is admirable in itself is a quality of feeling come to if taken in all its purity and carried to its furthest extreme -- which should be the extreme of admirableness? It would amount to saying that the one ultimately admirable object is the unrestrained gratification of a desire, regardless of what the nature of that desire may be. Now that is too shocking. It would be the doctrine that all the higher modes of consciousness with which we are acquainted in ourselves, such as love and reason, are good only so far as they subserve the lowest of all modes of consciousness. It would be the doctrine that this vast universe of Nature which we contemplate with such awe is good only to produce a certain quality of feeling. Certainly, I must be excused for not admitting that doctrine unless it be proved with the utmost evidence. So, then, what proof is there that it is true? The only reason for it that I have been able to learn is that gratification, pleasure, is the only conceivable result that is satisfied with itself; and therefore, since we are seeking for that which is fine and admirable without any reason beyond itself, pleasure, bliss, is the only object which can satisfy the conditions. This is a respectable argument. It deserves consideration. Its premiss, that pleasure is the only conceivable result that is perfectly self-satisfied, must be granted. Only, in these days of evolutionary ideas which are traceable to the French Revolution as their instigator, and still further back to Galileo's experiment at the leaning tower of Pisa, and still further back to all the stands that have been made by Luther and even by Robert of Lincoln against attempts to bind down human reason to any prescriptions fixed in advance -- in these days, I say, when these ideas of progress and growth have themselves grown up so as to occupy our minds as they now do, how can we be expected to allow the assumption to pass that the admirable in itself is any stationary result? The explanation of the circumstance that the only result that is satisfied with itself is a quality of feeling is that reason always looks forward to an endless future and expects endlessly to improve its results."

This is one of the remarkable passages that invites one to say, read it three times and understand it.

But let me have at it for a few minutes: Peirce is suggesting that as we see, armed with the most reasonable and loving feeling, so the summum bonum is reached. It is a progression. It is consciousness as feeling overcoming every obstacle. It is the victory of heaven.

Understand that it is our soul's desire. We are souls set on achieving our own advancement in the direction of higher consciousness. And we understand that any result from our expressions and action is merely a stage in what is an endless future.

So alien is this from pragmatism that Peirce renamed his thinking pragmaticism and it contains all the bells and whistles needed to make him remembered as the person who knew that there was no split between physics and metaphysics. The requirements of physics are expressed in the simple statement that there is no such thing as emptiness or nothing or any part of a binary split.

Now go back and read and enjoy this three times. I will join you.