In a section on personality, near the end of “The Law of Mind,” Peirce argues that “personality is some kind of coördination or connection of ideas” and that a “personality, like any general idea, is not a thing to be apprehended in an instant.” Personality, as something really continuous, is a welding of infinitesimal moments, like any general idea, and not a concatenation of instants of “immediate self-consciousness.” Peirce claims that there is a “teleological harmony” in coordinated ideas and that “in the case of personality this teleology is more than a mere purposive pursuit of a predeterminate end; it is a developmental teleology…. A general idea, living and conscious now, it is already determinative of acts in the future to an extent to which it is not now conscious.” This account of personality explains the continuity of feeling and consciousness that is generally supposed to attach to personal identity but Peirce’s old semiotic account from his 1868 Journal of Speculative Philosophy papers may provide a clearer sense of the role of the other (the interpreter) in the development of a personality.
Peirce concludes by arguing that the synechistic philosophy “is forced to accept the doctrine of a personal God” and, moreover, that “we must have a direct perception of that person and indeed be in personal communication with him.” How, then, can God’s existence be doubted? This may have been the beginning of the line of thought that would lead to Peirce’s “Neglected Argument for the Reality of God” sixteen years later.
Back in New York after his Cambridge visit, Peirce quickly resumed his “academic journalism” for the Nation. Toward the end of May, he reviewed Arabella Buckley’s Moral Teachings of Science (sel. 53). The subject of Buckley’s book, though not the book itself, struck a chord with Peirce. One thing that science teaches is “perfect fairness and moral indifference as to the outcome of any inquiry.” Truth may well be pursued by the same inquirer in the church and in the laboratory, but both pursuits are radically different in their objects and methods of study. Fairness and honesty require that each approach exclude the other’s point of view. Should any conflict arise, the scientist would reason that the inquiry was still in progress on either side, the regulative hope being “that there is an ultimate resting-place which will be satisfactory from both points of view.” Another important “teaching of science” is the need for perfect candor in recognizing facts, “without trying to explain away real difficulties so as to make out a decided conclusion”: this “is the very first point of scientific morals.” Unlike the practice of law, with its “rules for excluding certain kinds of testimony,” science must exclude nothing: “It must let instincts and superstitions have their say, unchecked, and listen to them; and then it must let scientific observation have its say, equally unchecked. Science will erect a theory which shall do full justice to both orders of facts, if it can.”
But these are more the teachings of “scientific logic” than the “moral teachings” that concerned Buckley, who meant to derive moral and spiritual beliefs compatible with science. Only “airy optimism” could suppose such beliefs to be necessarily sound, Peirce objected. As a historical process of progressive discovery, science “is essentially incomplete” and fundamentally incapable of expressing anything about “eternal verities” or “teaching spiritual things.” Besides, Peirce remarked grimly, moral teachings derived from science are “in the main distinctly anti-Christian.” Science follows the mechanical philosophy which leaves no room for final causes and reduces “God to the condition of a limited monarch, acting under laws which leave no room for personal favors.” One can see how the thought Peirce was devoting to his Monist papers was flowing over into his more “popular” writings.
Following a brief spat Peirce had with Carus at the end of May over misgivings regarding Carus’s negative attitude toward Peirce’s philosophical views, Peirce wrote to Carus on 3 June to clarify his concerns:
As for the flags and parties in philosophy, I think it is 10 to 1 we are all in the wrong. We should therefore exercise the utmost toleration. Besides philosophy has little practical value. It is a poor thing to base religion or conduct or politics or business of any kind on. And I for one am not at all disposed to risk any skin upon it [the dictates of philosophy] or make a party to advocate any particular variety of philosophy. When I enter a philosophical disputation it is in the hopes that I and the audience will learn something, not at all to cause the triumph of any doctrine. In fact, when philosophy becomes partisan, it may be sophy but it ceases to be philosophy…. The scientist, like the philosopher, does not busy himself with vindicating doctrines but in searching out truth. He is a student, not a party-leader…. I as a philosopher have no more to do with the cause of religion than the chemist has. I am just pegging away at my studies and giving the results to the world, without any ulterior purpose. I want to publish them in a journal which does not care a straw what the results may be, or what cause they forward or injure.
In mid June, Peirce wrote for the Nation a review of William Ridgeway’s Origin of Metallic Currency (sel. 54). As a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Weights, Measures, and Coinage, and once in charge of the U.S. Office of Weights and Measures (in 1884–85), Peirce was clearly an expert on the book’s subject-matter. His review provided a brief but compelling critique of the history of standards and finished with restrained praise for Ridgeway, who, despite being “old school”—“he attaches more importance to documents than to monuments”—had admittedly managed to produce a “strong work.”
Earlier in the month, on 9 June, pressed for money, Peirce had asked Carus for immediate payment for “The Law of Mind” and for an advance for his next article (sel. 29): “A succession of misfortunes in the last year has put me for the time being into great straits financially. I am on the point of placing two inventions each for a very large sum, but negotiations are slow, and it is essential that I should keep up appearances. Consequently, a few hundred dollars now will be worth to me many thousand a little later.” The next day Carus sent a check for $200 for “The Law of Mind” and on the 16th he advanced $100 for “Man’s Glassy Essence.”
One of the inventions Peirce was referring to was his improvement of a new bleaching process.104 In June, Peirce was brought into an investment scheme, headed by Wall Street promoter Thomas J. Montgomery, formed to profit from the efficiencies of a new electrolytic bleaching process recently patented by the inventor, Albert E. Woolf. Woolf, who lived in New York and was apparently aware of Peirce’s expertise as a chemical engineer, had invited him to examine his bleaching process. Peirce’s examination and suggestions led Montgomery to engage Peirce to thoroughly analyze the Woolf process and prepare a report on its chemistry, and on possible improvements, for the investors. Montgomery agreed to pay Peirce $500 for the analysis and report and offered him $100,000 in stock for significant improvements to the process (there is some indication that Peirce expected even higher fees and yields). Peirce spent a great deal of time analyzing the Woolf process for bleaching by electrolysis and succeeded in discovering patentable improvements that would make the process more efficient and more effective (doubling its “intrinsic economy”).105 Peirce’s improvements included a new chemical action “hitherto unknown to science,” a new “cyclical process” that preserved the effectiveness of the bleaching solution, a new procedure for handling the bleaching solution in relation to the electrodes in the decomposing tank, and a new alternating process of repeatedly bleaching in an acid solution and cleansing in an alkaline solution that could yield marked efficiencies. Peirce reported these findings in detail to Montgomery on 6 July and recommended that the latter waste no time in applying for patents: “Woolf’s patents in my opinion are of no great market value, because there is nothing new in his process except making the solution alkaline. But the invention here described