Also around this time Peirce wrote up a proposal for a “Summa Scientiæ” (sel. 50) to be organized according to his classification of the sciences and intended to appear in a single volume of 1500 pages. The seven divisions with their sixty-four sections would be filled with articles mostly of less than one page in length, about one third of which Peirce would write himself. The rest would be assigned to young men, selected for their “exceptional mental power and special competence” but “who have not yet achieved great reputations.” Peirce probably had Allan Risteen in mind as one of his young specialists; on 24 February, Risteen had written to Peirce about a scheme Peirce was about to take up and asked “if it is anything you might want me for.” It is likely that much of the material for Peirce’s own entries was to come from his Century Dictionary definitions and, with ninety pages reserved for biographies, his research on great men would have been put to good use as well. It is not known which publisher Peirce submitted his proposal to, or even if he sent it out, but had it been accepted it would have given the Peirces a chance to reorganize their lives without the severe threat of total financial collapse. Peirce was asking for $3000 a year for two years and, additionally, for $10 to $15 per one thousand words.
Meanwhile, Peirce had undertaken another project of quite a different kind. Since February he had been consulting geography and travel books on Thessaly in Northern Greece and taking a lot of notes. He was assembling the background information he needed to compose an embroidered tale of his travels in that province in the fall of 1870, when he had scouted out sites for the American party of astronomers who would come to the Mediterranean region to observe the solar eclipse of 22 December 1870.86 Thessaly was then still under Ottoman rule and the Greeks, animated by the “Great Idea” of reconstituting a free Greek state, were in nearly continuous rebellion against Ottoman domination.87 Peirce set his tale, with its “fictional embroideries,” about 1862, the year King Otto was expelled from Greece. It was the story of Karolos Kalerges,88 a young Harvard graduate on a grand tour of Europe, who, by a curious turn of events, “landed one bright summer’s morning from an Aegean steamer at the little town of Bolos” in southeastern Thessaly. Thus began Karolos’s eventful tour of Thessaly, during which he was befriended by Thodores Maurokordato, with whom he became a blood-brother on the way to Larissa; ingratiated himself to the Turkish governor-general Husni Pasha (as a precaution, since Karolos was a Christian) and contrived to borrow his carriage, the only one in Thessaly; was captured by a band of klephts and saved by Thodores; was wounded while participating in a raid on a Turkish estate during which he abducted a young Persian widow (or so she believed), Roshaná, with whom he fell in love. There is some exploration of friendship and love in Peirce’s tale, and occasional revealing moments, such as when Karolos and Thodores discuss the abduction of Roshaná and Karolos remarks that “In America … more women than horses are stolen by gentlemen in one way or another,” but it was not a story of ideas. Peirce’s experience in Thessaly had been singular and deeply impressive and, as he wrote many years later in a revised preface to his “Tale,” he wanted “to give an idea of the place and the people as I saw them, and to express the sentiment which they strongly excited in the breast of a young American.”89
Peirce wrote his tale to be presented orally, but on 26 March he wrote to Richard Watson Gilder, editor of the Century Magazine, offering his story, “An Excursion into Thessaly: a Tale” (sel. 51), for publication: “I have just written a Tale, which without being extraordinary, is pretty, fresh, interesting, and well adapted to woodcut illustration.” On 1 April, after a positive reply from Gilder, Peirce sent his “Tale” under cover of a letter expressing doubts that it was right for the Century but remaining hopeful: “But still I venture to ask you to read it, because if you think the vein would be popular, I could write half a dozen such describing picturesque countries with an ingenuous & foolish young man getting into fearful predicaments in them; and all in a poetical and naive fashion.”90
On that same first day of April, the second article of Peirce’s metaphysical series, “The Doctrine of Necessity Examined” (sel. 24, discussed earlier), appeared in the Monist. Peirce had been waiting for his article on necessity to appear; he wrote to Carus on 3 April inquiring if the new issue was out and requesting six copies. He told Carus that he would soon send a third article. Peirce had begun some preliminary work for his next two Monist articles, which he thought of as his papers on mind (sels. 27 and 29), and over the coming weeks he would catch up on current debates on various related topics including the molecular theory of protoplasm, theories of time, and theories of infinity and continuity. For months, Peirce had been casting about for financial opportunities and living a life of interruptions. April would be a month of more focused reflection and concentration, and only two things would occupy him, his “Tale of Thessaly” and his next Monist articles.
While his Thessalian story was in Gilder’s hands, Peirce kept working to improve the story line. It is surprising that he had taken up this complicated writing project at this time in his life since it was a new genre for him and his chance of reaping significant returns could not have been good. It is true that Peirce thought his story would make a compelling popular lecture and he had great confidence in his skill as an orator. Yet given the sheer length of the story and the considerable historical, geographical, and linguistic research necessary to give his tale a cachet of genuineness, he must have known that the effort spent on the tale could have been devoted to more lucrative writing in one of his areas of expertise. All things considered, it seems unlikely that monetary return was Peirce’s deepest motive. What was it, then? In part, it was the newness of it, as he told Gilder: “[It is my] first attempt in the line of writing except scientific and philosophical discussion, and therefore it is important and exciting to me.” Fourteen years later, he explained to Lady Welby that the story had been “an experiment to test a certain psychological theory of mine…. What I aimed at was to reproduce the psychical effect of a peculiar atmosphere, both meteorological and social.”91 But one senses that there was a sentimental factor motivating Peirce to dwell on this romantic and valiant episode in his life, a time of vibrancy and confidence. Peirce’s life in April 1892 was on the brink of ruin and it must have been consoling to remember back to such a time and to compose the story, embroidered though it was, of the young man he had been.
Peirce’s philosophical energies in April were focused on the next two papers for his Monist series (sels. 27 and 29). Though writing for the Monist to make money, he was engaged in some of the most profound philosophical ruminations of his life. It is not certain precisely when the surviving working papers for “The Law of Mind” were composed, but selections 25 and 26 surely represent the early work on “The Law of Mind” that he told Carus he would soon be sending. These selections, and some pages entitled “A Molecular Theory of Protoplasm,” preliminary to “Man’s Glassy Essence” (sel. 29), are products of Peirce’s April cogitations.
In “The Law of Mind [Early Try]” (sel. 25), Peirce reveals a stronger religious cast than ever before expressed:
I propose next to show, by the study of the soul, that, if my previous conclusions are accepted, we shall be naturally led to the belief that the universe is governed by a father, with whom we can be in real relations of communion, and who may be expected to listen to prayer, and answer it. In short, necessitarianism once out of the way, which puts nature under the rule of blind and inexorable law, that leaves no room for any other influence, we find no other serious objection to a return to the principle of Christianity.
It was to be expected, perhaps, that in writing for the Monist, a journal devoted to the reconciliation of science and religion, Peirce would bring religion into his work more than he might have under other circumstances; but whatever the motivation, it seems clear that Peirce was becoming increasingly interested in questions bearing on religion.92 Peirce continued with a sketch of an argument he would develop much more fully in sel. 27. The “study of the soul” was really to be an attempt to formulate the core principle of mental action. Agreeing with James that ideas are not discrete, Peirce emphasized the irreducible tendency for ideas to “spread” and to “affect” other ideas standing to them in a relation of “continuous affectibility.”