the one is previous to the other, the latter subsequent to the former; and no instant is both previous and subsequent to the same instant.” (2) “This general temporal relation is a transitive one.” (3) “If one instant is previous to another, there is a continuously infinite series of instants, subsequent to the former and previous to the latter.” (4) “Given any three instants, A, B, C, there is a fourth instant D as much previous or subsequent to C as B is to A.” In working out his third condition, first expressed more simply as “time is infinitely divisible,” Peirce noted that infinite divisibility was often confounded with continuity but that Cantor had refuted that idea. Peirce made some comparisons between his views on multitudes (collections, or sets) and continuity and those of Cantor, insisting in particular on a distinction he had made as early as 1881 between finite and infinite collections (W4, sel. 38): Fermatian inference (mathematical induction) is applicable to finite collections but not to infinite ones. Claiming that the number of points on a line “however short” is “continuously infinite,” he added that a “continuously infinite multitude” is the greatest infinity that can be “present” to us in a mathematical construction. By contrast, there may be an incomparably greater continuum of an infinite number of dimensions, but it would not be one that could be exhibited in a construction.94 Peirce concluded his discussion by defining time as a “hyperbolic” continuum in which “the infinitely past and the infinitely future are distinct and do not coincide,” which he believed “accords with our natural idea of time.”
On 17 April, Harvard student Justus Pearl Sheffield invited Peirce to speak to the Graduate Philosophical Club: “We have all been very anxious to hear you, on any topic that you might be pleased to select: all the more anxious in that your paper would in all likelihood be to Harvard men ‘the other side.’” Peirce must have been pleased with this invitation and on May 21st he would read his “Law of Mind” to the Philosophical Club, only three days before submitting it for publication. On Friday evening, 22 April, Peirce gave his premier reading of his “Tale of Thessaly” to a select group at the Century Club and the following month, mentioning the experience to Francis Russell, he said it had been before “some of the very best judges of such things” and that “they were much struck and delighted” with his story. Peirce said that the reading had taken an hour and a half, but was “not at all tedious” (14 May 1892).
The strengthening religious motivation that revealed itself in the opening paragraph of Peirce’s “The Law of Mind [Early Try] (sel. 25), was not the result of an intellectual turn but was deeply personal, a consequence of Peirce’s manifest experiences. The transformational power of the religious feelings Peirce had begun to experience is revealed in the famous letter he wrote on Sunday morning, 24 April 1892, to Rev. John Wesley Brown, Rector of St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue. It is not known whether the letter was ever sent.
Dear & Reverend Sir:
I took the Holy Communion at St. Thomas’s this morning,—in fact, just now,— under peculiar circumstances, which it seems proper to report.
For many years I have not taken the Communion and have seldom entered a church, although I have always had a passionate love for the church and a complete faith that the essence of christianity, whatever that might be, was Divine; but still I could not reconcile my notions of common sense and of evidence with the propositions of the creed, and I found going to church made me sophistical and gave me an impulse to play fast and loose with matters of intellectual integrity. Therefore, I gave it up; though it has been the cause of many a bitter reflection. Many times I have tried to cipher out some justification for my return to the communion of the church; but I could not. Especially, the last two nights I have lain awake thinking of the matter.
This morning after breakfast I felt I must go to church anyway. I wandered about, not knowing where to find a regular episcopal church, in which I was confirmed; but I finally came to St. Thomas. I had several times been in it on week days to look at the chancel.95 I therefore saw nothing new to me. But this time,—I was not thinking of St. Thomas and his doubts, either,—no sooner had I got into the church than I seemed to receive the direct permission of the Master to come. Still, I said to myself, I must not go to the communion without further reflection! I must go home & duly prepare myself before I venture. But when the instant came, I found myself carried up to the altar rail, almost without my own volition. I am perfectly sure that it was right. Anyway, I could not help it.
I may mention as a reason why I do not offer to put my gratitude for the bounty granted to me into some form of church work, that that which seemed to call me today seemed to promise me that I should bear a cross like death for the Master’s sake, and he would give me strength to bear it. I am sure that will happen. My part is to wait.
I have never before been mystical; but now I am. After giving myself time to reflect upon the situation, I will call to see you.
Yours very truly
C. S. Peirce
It does not seem to me that it would be wise to make the circumstances known; but I conceive it my duty to report them to you.
I am a man of 52, and married.
This letter is sometimes taken as sufficient evidence for the conclusion that Peirce had undergone a religious conversion on 24 April 1892 after undergoing a profound mystical experience.96 One must be cautious, however, in drawing conclusions based on this letter, coming as it did, at a time when Peirce was feeling much stress and an increasing sense of helplessness. What Peirce meant by “mystical” is also open to question. Presumably he meant what is found in the Century Dictionary under “mystical theology” (not one of Peirce’s definitions, however): “the knowledge of God or of divine things, derived not from observation or from argument, but wholly from spiritual experience, and not discriminated or tested by the reason.” But it should be noted that in his 1878 article, “The Order of Nature,” the paper Peirce pointed to as the ancestor of his Monist metaphysical series, he wrote that by “mystical theories” he meant “all those which have no possibility of being mechanically explained” (W3: 321). In any case, it is clear that Peirce was undergoing a profound change, a conversion of some kind, that he might have felt most directly and pointedly at St. Thomas’s on the morning of 24 April.
Peirce’s state of mind at this time is further revealed in a letter he wrote to Carus offering to write an article for the Open Court on the positive value of unusual personal experience:97
Dear Sir:
I think I could write an acceptable article or even two for the Open Court on the following materials[:]
1. Personal experience has a positive value always. This is greater the more unusual the experience. That which I have to report seems worth mention.
(A) Of late years I have suffered extreme adversity & affliction, being
(B) In the somewhat unusual situation of a student of philosophy, laboratorybred, who holds on essentially to the creed & communion of the church.
(C) Now, the facts which seem worth reporting are 1st, what kind of reflections I have found really consoling, 2nd, how the different literary works addressed to those in such circumstances sound.
2. Of course, it is nothing but the experience of a single individual; still, it is out of individual experiences that general experience is built. But I wish to say clearly that a single case can have, until verified & supported by others, no importance at all. Still, I write as a means of collecting other testimony.
Under the 1st head, my experience would, if generally borne out by others, go to support the law of continuity. For first, I find, ideas about heaven of very little or no support,
