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Digital Companion to C. S. Peirce



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Some Wit, Wisdom & Bewilderment

Two things here are all-important to assure oneself of and to remember. The first is that a person is not absolutely an individual. His thoughts are what he is "saying to himself," that is, is saying to that other self that is just coming into life in the flow of time. When one reasons, it is that critical self that one is trying to persuade; and all thought whatsoever is a sign, and is mostly of the nature of language. The second thing to remember is that the man's circle of society (however widely or narrowly this phrase may be understood) is a sort of loosely compacted person, in some respects of higher rank than the person of an individual organism. It is these two things alone that render it possible for you, - but only in the abstract, and in a Pickwickian sense, - to distinguish between absolute truth and what you do not doubt.
What Pragmatism Is, 1905