26
The Basis of Pragmaticism in Phaneroscopy
I have already given the reasons which convince me that if philosophy is to be made a science, the very first price we must pay for it must be to abandon all endeavor to make it literary. We must have a vocabulary in which every word has a single meaning, whether definite or vague; and to this end we must not shrink from inventing new words whenever they are really needed; and if these words are disagreeable to writers of taste, that will only make them the more suitable for our uses. It was in seeking to fulfill that condition that I invented the word pragmaticism to denote precisely what I had formerly invented pragmatism to mean; and since the latter had been employed, not only by philosophists to express doctrines not covered by my original definition (as I was very much pleased by their doing), but also by elegant writers in connections which I dare say convey some meaning to readers who share their habits of mind, but which I could not comprehend without more labor than I am willing to bestow; in view of these facts, thinking that possibly the wishes of the inventor of the word might have a certain weight, notwithstanding his neglect to take out a patent on it, or even to request that nobody should write or read it except himself, I ventured to recommend that this word should be used to denote that general opinion about the nature of the clear apprehension of thought which is shared by those whom all the world calls pragmatists, and who so call themselves, no matter how one or other of us might state the substance of that accord. After a good deal of reflection and careful rereading,* I have come to think that the common pragmatistic opinion aforesaid is that every thought (unless perhaps certain single ideas each quite sui generis) has a meaning beyond the immediate content of the thought itself, so that it is as absurd to speak of a thought in itself as it would be to say of a man that he was a husband in himself or a son in himself, and this not merely because thought always refers to a real or fictitious object, but also because it supposes itself to be interpretable. If this analysis of the pragmatistic opinion be correct, the logical breadth of the term pragmatist is hereby enormously enlarged. For it will become predicable not only of Mr. Royce (who, apart from this analysis, impresses me quite decidedly as a pragmatist), but also of a large section of the logical world,—perhaps the majority,—since ancient times. The usual opinion of modern logicians has been that a great proportion of concepts have a meaning beyond themselves; for they have followed Leibniz in so far as to admit a large class of “symbolical” cognitions, though they have no doubt differed as to the extension of non-symbolical, or “intuitive,” thought. Indeed, nominalists, in so far as they adhere to the doctrine of their “venerable inceptor,”1 must under this understanding be classed as pragmatists, since Ockham regarded all concepts as “terms,” and distinctly spoke of them as mental signs.2 Nor were the scholastic realists posterior to Aquinas particularly averse to this view. Indeed, Aristotle himself would be a pragmatist. If we wished to exclude the general body of such logicians from the ranks of this school, we should have to describe the latter, no longer as consisting of those who hold to the doctrine that every thought has a meaning beyond its immediate content, but as confined to those who specially insist upon certain consequences of this doctrine, when the unity of their opinion would lose its definiteness.
The contents of most logic books is a syncretistic hodgepodge, and it is difficult to detect any differences but those of detail between one book and another. It is certain, however, that there have been, and still are, many logicians who in regard to our more primary and simple thoughts would protest against the theory that they have any exterior meaning. “The meaning!” these logicians would exclaim, “That is precisely the concept!” The refutation of this opinion will make us pragmatists, according to my analysis. In order to establish pragmaticism, it will be necessary further to show that if the ultimate interpretation of a thought relates to anything but a determination of conditional conduct, it cannot be of an intellectual quality and so is not in the strictest sense a concept.
I propose to use the word Phaneron as a proper name to denote the total content of any one consciousness (for any one is substantially any other), the sum of all we have in mind in any way whatever, regardless of its cognitive value. This is pretty vague: I intentionally leave it so. I will only point out that I do not limit the reference to an instantaneous state of consciousness; for the clause “in any way whatever” takes in memory and all habitual cognition. The reader will probably wonder why I did not content myself with some expression already in use. The reason is that the absence of any contiguous associations with the new word will render it sharper and clearer than any well-worn coin could be.
I invite the reader to join me in a little survey of the Phaneron (which will be sufficiently identical for him and for me) in order to discover what different forms of indecomposable elements it contains. On account of the general interest of this inquiry, I propose to push it further than the question of pragmaticism requires; but I shall be forced to compress my matter excessively. It will be a work of observation. But in order that a work of observation should bring in any considerable harvest, there must always be a preparation of thought, a consideration, as definite as may be, of what it is possible that observation should disclose. That is a principle familiar to every observer. Even if one is destined to be quite surprised, the preparation will be of mighty aid.
As such preparation for our survey, then, let us consider what forms of indecomposable elements it is possible that we should find. The expression “indecomposable element” sounds pleonastic; but it is not so, since I mean by it something which not only is elementary, since it seems so, and seeming is the only being a constituent of the Phaneron has, as such, but is moreover incapable of being separated by logical analysis into parts, whether they be substantial, essential, relative, or any other kind of parts. Thus, a cow inattentively regarded may perhaps be an element of the Phaneron; but whether it can be so or not, it is certain that it can be analyzed logically into many parts of different kinds that are not in it as a constituent of the Phaneron, since they were not in mind in the same way as the cow was, nor in any way in which the cow, as an appearance in the Phaneron, could be said to be formed of these parts. We are to consider what forms are possible, rather than what kinds are possible, because it is universally admitted, in all sorts of inquiries, that the most important divisions are divisions according to form, and not according to qualities of matter, in case division according to form is possible at all. Indeed, this necessarily results from the very idea of the distinction between form and matter. If we content ourselves with the usual statement of this idea, the consequence is quite obvious. A doubt may, however, arise whether any distinction of form is possible among indecomposable elements. But since a possibility is proved as soon as a single actual instance is found, it will suffice to remark that although the chemical atoms were until quite recently conceived to be, each of them, quite indecomposable and homogeneous, yet they have for half a century been known to differ from one another, not indeed in internal form, but in external form. Carbon, for example, is a tetrad, combining only in the form 
(marsh gas),3 that is, with four bonds with monads (such as is H) or their equivalent; boron is a triad, forming by the action of magnesium on boracic anhydride, 
, and never combining with any other valency; glucinum is a dyad, forming clGcl, as the vapor-density of this salt, corroborated by many other tests, conclusively shows, and it, too, always has the same valency; lithium forms LiH and Lil and Li3N, and is invariably a monad; and finally helion, neon, argon, krypton, and xenon are medads, not entering into atomic combination at all. We conclude, then, that there is a fair antecedent reason to suspect that the Phaneron’s indecomposable elements may likewise have analogous differences of external form. Should we find this possibility to be actualized, it will, beyond all dispute, furnish us with by far the most important of all divisions of such elements.4
I trust no reader will understand me to be capable of reasoning by analogy from the constitution of chemical substances to the logical constitution of thought. I know very well that much of the substance of the present article has a distinct resemblance to a certain species of demilunatic stuff of which there is so much in the world that it is likely to cumber the shelves of any elderly logician who does not take measures to get rid of it. I know furthermore that the world is full of minds of such a caliber that because a good deal of precious nonsense is of a certain type, they wish to know no more of anything that is of that type. I do not much regret it, because it is unlikely that a person who passes judgment in such fashion should possess that rare faculty of looking out of his own eyes and seeing what stares him in the face,—a faculty, however, that I desiderate in my reader, and feel confident of having in every attentive reader. But though I do not offer such a crude argument, it is certainly true that all physical science involves (I do not say depends upon) the postulate of a resemblance between nature’s law and what it is natural for man to think, and moreover, the success of science affords overwhelming proof that that postulate is true; and consequently, sound logic does distinctly recommend that the hypothesis of the indecomposable elements of the Phaneron being in their general constitution like the chemical atoms be taken up as a hypothesis with a view to its being subjected to the test of an inductive inquiry.
There are further considerations, however, which warrant our expecting more confidently to find in elements of the Phaneron certain forms than to find certain others. Thus, unless the Phaneron were to consist entirely of elements altogether uncombined mentally, in which case we should have no idea of a Phaneron (since this, if we have the idea, is an idea combining all the rest), which is as much as to say that there would be no Phaneron, its esse being percipi if any is so; or unless the Phaneron were itself our sole idea, and were utterly indecomposable, when there could be no such thing as an interrogation and no such thing as a judgment (as will appear below), it follows that if there is a Phaneron (which would be an assertion), or even if we can ask whether there be or no, there must be an idea of combination (i.e., having combination for its object thought of). Now the general idea of a combination must be an indecomposable idea. For otherwise it would be compounded, and the idea of combination would enter into it as an analytic part of it. It is, however, quite absurd to suppose an idea to be a part of itself, and not the whole. Therefore, if there is a Phaneron, the idea of combination is an indecomposable element of it. This idea is a triad; for it involves the ideas of a whole and of two parts (a point to be further considered below). Accordingly, there will necessarily be a triad in the Phaneron. Moreover, if the metaphysicians are right in saying (those of them who do say so) that there is but one absolutely necessary idea, which is that of the Triune God, then this idea of the Triune God must in some way be identical with the simple idea of combination.
But out of triads exclusively it is possible to build all external forms, medads, monads, dyads, triads, tetrads, pentads, hexads, and the rest. The figure below suggests one way.
So far as our study has now gone, then, it appears possible that all elements of the Phaneron should be triads. But an obvious principle which is as purely a priori as a principle well can be, since it is involved in the very idea of the Phaneron as containing constituents of which some are logically unanalyzable and others analyzable, promptly reduces that subjective possibility to an absurdity. I mean the principle that whatever is logically involved in an ingredient of the Phaneron is itself an ingredient of the Phaneron; for it is in the mind even though it be only implicitly so. Suppose then a Triad to be in the Phaneron. It connects three objects, A, B, C, however indefinite A, B, and C may be. There must, then, be one of the three, at least, say C, which establishes a relation between the other two, A and B. The result is that A and B are in a dyadic relation, and C may be ignored, even if it cannot be supposed absent. Now this dyadic relation between A and B, without reference to any third, involves a Secundan. In like manner, in order that there may be a Secundan, so that A and B are in some sense opposed, and neither is swallowed up in the other,—or even if only one of them had such an independent standing, it must be capable of being regarded as more or less determinate and positive in itself, and so involves Primanity. This Primanity supposes a Priman element; so that the suggestion that no elements should be Primans is absurd, as is the suggestion that no elements should be Secundans.
This same principle may be applied in the same way to any Tetradic constituent of the Phaneron. But if we expect it to lead to an analogous conclusion we shall find ourselves out of that dead reckoning. Suppose a Tetrad in the Phaneron. Now just as the being of a Tertian consists precisely in its connecting the members of a triplet, so that two of them are united in the third, so the Quartanness of the tetrad will consist in its connecting the members of a quaternion, say A, B, C, D, and in nothing else. That is precisely its form. As the triad involves dyads, so likewise does the tetrad. Let A, B be the objects of such a dyad. The tetrad is more than a mere dyad for those objects. I mean that it not only makes one of them determine the other in some regard, after the manner of dyads, or,—to use the word which we are in the habit of using only in reference to the more characteristic kinds of dyads, but which I will extend for the nonce to all dyads, in order to call up my idea in the reader’s mind,—the tetrad not only makes A to “act” upon B (or B upon A), but, like a triad, indeed as involving Tertianity (just as we have seen that a triad involves Secundanity), it puts together A and B, so that they make up a third object,—to continue my method of expression by stretching the extension of terms, I might say, so that they “create” a third, namely the pair, understood as involving all that the tetrad implies concerning these two prescinded from C and D. Moreover the tetrad involves a dyad, one of whose objects is this pair of A and B, while the other is either C or D, say C. Here again the tetrad makes the dyad more than a mere dyad, since it unites C to the pair of A and B, and makes them create a new object, their pair. And finally it unites this last pair to D. Thus, the entire function of the tetrad is performed by a series of Triads; and consequently, there can be no unanalyzable tetrad, nothing to be called a quartan element of the Phaneron. Plainly, the same process will exclude quintanity, sextanity, septanity, and all higher forms of indecomposable elements from the Phaneron.
To many a reader this reasoning will appear obscure and inconclusive. This effect is due to the argument’s turning upon such a complex of prescissive abstractions; for an abstract concept is essentially indefinite. Now the reader would not have been a reader of this paper unless he had had the intellectual virtue of striving to give definite interpretations to concepts. But it often happens that this virtue being coupled with a particular natural turn of mind, breeds an intellectual vice, the bad habit of dropping all lines of study which largely introduce indefinite concepts, so that those who contract this habit never gain a proper training in handling such concepts. This is by no means the only difficulty of mathematics, which incessantly employs them, but it is perhaps the chief reason why we find among particularly able professional men, and even among thinkers, so many who are completely shut off from mathematics. But those whom this demonstration fails to reach may find themselves convinced by the facts of observation when we come to consider them.
Some will ask whether, if every tetrad can be built up out of triads, it must not be equally true that every triad can be built up out of dyads. The reason has already been stated, namely, that nothing can be built up out of other things without combining those other things, and combination is itself manifestly a triad. But those who do not see the force of this reason had better try to build up a chemical triad, that is, a connected group with three free bonds, out of chemical dyads, while observing the law of valency.
Much might be profitably added to this preliminary a priori study; but even with the greatest compression I shall cover too many of the valuable pages of the Monist.5 We must hasten, then, to try how well or ill our a priori conclusions are supported by the actual examination of the contents of the Phaneron. Let us begin at once.
Can we find in the Phaneron any element logically indecomposable, which is such as it is, altogether otherwise than relatively, but positively, and regardless of aught else?
I answer, There are many such elements. I instance the color of a stick of countinghouse sealing wax which I had to use a few moments ago, and which still lies on my table in plain sight. This is an element, for I do not see it as composite. It is also logically indecomposable. It is true that I can take down my color wheel, analyze this color, and define it in an equation. But such an equation, far from expressing any logical analysis, does not even define the color-sensation. For an observer thoroughly trained to recognize his immediate feelings as they are felt, free from all the allowances which we naturally make for the circumstances of the experience, will perceive that when the stick of sealing wax be highly illuminated, the sensation is more scarlet, and that under a dim light it verges toward a dull vermillion hue; and yet the analysis by the color wheel will wholly fail to detect this. For a mere admixture of black with the color of the highly illuminated wax will make it a precise match for the feebly illuminated wax. Considerably more like a logical analysis is the ordinary description of a color in terms of its luminosity, chroma (or degree of departure from grey), and hue; as one might say that the color of this sealing wax is moderately luminous but extremely chromatic color, pretty nearly pure red in hue, yet decidedly leaning toward scarlet. But however much this may resemble a logical analysis, it [is] not what I mean by that term when I say that a Priman, a Secundan, or a Tertian is essentially indecomposable. For if a man possessed no other color-sensation but that excited by this sealing wax under good forenoon illumination from white clouds, indoors close to a window, he might devote his life to thinking about it, but he never would discover that there were those three respects: luminousness, chroma, and hue. They are not seen in the color taken by itself but only in the color as it appears in comparison with others. That is shown by the fact that in order to describe the color with tolerable accuracy, it is necessary to experiment by placing it in successive juxtaposition with others which are very much like it, one in luminosity, another in chroma, and a third in hue. This shows that though the description does not refer to the phenomena of mixture-experiments, it does refer to phenomena of experiments. If I am asked whether the same thing is not true of logical analyses, I admit that some analyses which are sometimes called logical are of that kind, but not the logical analyses meant when we speak of the Priman, Secundan, and Tertian being logically indecomposable. Consider, for example, the word “red.” I mean the word “red” in that sense in which it is one and the same word, however often it be pronounced, and whether quite correctly or not. It has its being exclusively in governing this articulation (I leave writing out of account for simplicity) and the apprehension of Anglo-Saxons. The pronunciation varies enormously, the r from the grassouillée sound that most Frenchmen give to it, or did in my day, to the sound which is obtained by so much labor in the Comédie française, to the semi-articulate r of most of us, and to the “wred” of some people, the e also ranging over considerable variety, and finally the d being either of two sounds which are carefully distinguished in some languages, the dental d of the Latin races, and our alveolar d, and even an Arabic 
, Dhâd, or 
, dhâ, if pronounced explosively, would be tolerated. All these variations are of the being of the word, for other, much smaller departures from the average pronunciation would render the vocable quite unintelligible. Therefore, whether it be apprehended as consisting of three sounds, or be not so apprehended, mere attention to the word itself will bring out that composition, without any comparison with other words; and such an analysis is what I rather inaptly style “logical” decomposition, because it is effected in the same way in which one would find a definition of a familiar word whose meaning one had never before analyzed. That the quality red is positive and wholly resident in itself regardless of aught else is obvious. Yet even this may be doubted. The legend of the music of the spheres at least seems to be based on the notion that sense-qualities are relative to each other. But even if everything in the world and in the Phaneron were precisely of this sealing-wax red, though we should not be distinctly aware of it, I suppose that it would tinge our disposition, and so be, in some sense, in the mind. If it would not, this would be merely a psychological fact: it would have nothing to do with the quality red in itself. Nor can it be said that red is relative to a surface. For though we cannot prescind redness from superficial extension, we can easily distinguish it from superficial extension, owing (for one thing) to our being able to prescind the latter from the former. Sealing-wax red, then, is a Priman.
So is any other quality of feeling. Now the whole content of consciousness is made up of qualities of feeling, as truly as the whole of space is made up of points or the whole of time of instants. Contemplate anything by itself,—anything whatever that can be,6 so contemplate it. Attend to the whole and drop the parts out of attention altogether. One can approximate nearly enough to the accomplishment of that to see that the result of its perfect accomplishment would be that one would have in his consciousness at the moment nothing but a quality of feeling. This quality of feeling would in itself, as so contemplated, have no parts. It would be unlike any other such quality of feeling. In itself, it would not even resemble any other; for resemblance has its being only in comparison. It would be a pure Priman. Since this is true of whatever we contemplate, however complex may be the object, it follows that there is nothing else in immediate consciousness. To be conscious is nothing else than to feel.
What room, then, is there for Secundans and Tertians? Was there some mistake in our demonstration that they must also have their places in the Phaneron? No, there was no mistake. I said that the Phaneron is made up entirely of qualities of feeling as truly as Space is entirely made up of points. There is a certain protoidal aspect,—I coin the word for the need,—under which Space is truly made up of nothing but points. Yet it is certain that no collection of points,—using the word collection to mean merely a plural, without the idea of the objects being brought together,—no collection of points, no matter how abnumerable its multitude, can in itself constitute Space. For Space has chorisy one, that is, is all one piece; its cyclosy and its periphraxy are each either zero or one,* that is, if it has room for a filament which could by no continuous deformation shrink indefinitely toward becoming a particle, a single simple superficial barrier would suffice to leave in the rest of Space no room for any such filament, and if it has room for any film, or deformable surface, which by no continuous deformation could shrink indefinitely toward becoming a filament, a single filamentary barrier would suffice to leave in the rest of Space no such room; and finally Space has an apeiry one, that is, it has room for a single solid which by no continuous deformation could shrink indefinitely toward becoming a film, but the barrier of a single particle would leave no room in the rest of Space for such unshrinkable solid.7 Now none of these properties necessarily belongs to any mere plural of points, except that a single point has chorisy one. It is not the points, but the relations between the different points, which produce the chorisy, cyclosy, periphraxy, and apeiry of Space, as well as its being topically non-singular, that is, its containing no place of any dimensionality which a deformable object occupying it could quit in fewer or in more ways than it could quit innumerable other such places all about it. What is the nature of all these relations as well as those of time? They all result from complications of only two elements. One of these is the relation of a distributively general object, “any” something, to the single individual collection which embraces “any” such, and nothing else. The other is the relation of geometrical betweenness, upon which Kempe first did some considerable logical work,8 though I, and doubtless every other exact logician who had examined the subject, already well knew that the key of geometry lay in that. If we consider any portion of a line, this portion having two extremities, A and B, then any point, X, of that portion lies “between” A and B; and any second point, Y, of that portion is either “between” X and A, while X is “between” it and B, or else is “between” X and B, while X is “between” it and A. Of these two relations, that between the distributive and collective “all” is dyadic, that of betweenness is triadic. But these are not at all characteristic examples of the dyad and the triad. Either has a decided protoidal tinge. The characteristic color of the dyad,—if I may be allowed the metaphor,—is that of opposition. But the distributive and collective are the same thing differently expressed. To say that X is between A and B is to say that the place of X, in so far as it is not the place of A, is the place of B, and in so far as it is not the place of B, is the place of A. It is a sort of divided agreement.
But the Phaneron does contain genuine Secundans. Standing on the outside of a door that is slightly ajar, you put your hand upon the knob to open and enter it. You experience an unseen, silent resistance. You put your shoulder against the door and gathering your forces put forth a tremendous effort. Effort supposes resistance. Where there is no effort, there is no resistance; where there is no resistance, there is no effort, either in this world or in any of the worlds of possibility. It follows that an effort is not a feeling nor anything priman or protoidal. There are feelings connected with it; they are the sum of consciousness during the effort. But it is conceivable that a man should have it in his power directly to summon up all those feelings, or any feelings. He could not, in any world, be endowed with the power of summoning up an effort to which there did not happen to be a resistance all ready to exist. For it is an absurdity to suppose that a man could directly will to oppose that very will. A very little thinking will show that this is what it comes to. According to such psychological analysis as I can make, effort is a phenomenon which only arises when one feeling abuts upon another in time, and which then always arises. But my psychological pretensions are little if they exist at all, and I only mention my theory in order that contrast should impress the reader with the irrelevancy of psychology to our present problem, which is to say of what sort that is which is in our minds when we make an effort and which constitutes it an effort. We live in two worlds, a world of fact and a world of fancy. Each of us is accustomed to think that he is the creator of his world of fancy; that he has but to pronounce his fiat, and the thing exists, with no resistance and no effort; and although this is so far from the truth that I doubt not that much the greater part of the reader’s labor is expended on the world of fancy, yet it is near enough the truth for a first approximation. For this reason we call the world of fancy the internal world, the world of fact the external world. In this latter, we are masters, each of us, of his own voluntary muscles, and of nothing more. But man is sly, and contrives to make this little more than he needs. Beyond that, he defends himself from the angles of hard fact by clothing himself with a garment of contentment and of habituation. Were it not for this garment, he would every now and then find his internal world rudely disturbed and his fiats set at naught by brutal inroads of ideas from without. I call such forcible modification of our ways of thinking, the influence of the world of fact, experience. But he patches up his garment by guessing what those inroads are likely to be and carefully excluding from his internal world every idea which is likely to be so disturbed. Instead of waiting for experience to come at untoward times, he provokes it when it can do no harm and changes the government of his internal world accordingly.