I've dug a few things up, some of it interesting, some of it also ugly.
Peirce had more than one mood.
Last pagragraph in Peirce's review in _The Nation_, Vol. 67, Aug. 25,
1898, 153-155, of _The Psychology of Suggestion_ by Boris Sidis with an
introduction by William James.
http://www.sidis.net/reviewsuggestion1.htm .
Reprinted in _Contributions to 'The Nation'_ 2:166-9.
In part iii. the author gives a slight account of some at those
mental epidemics of which several French writers, beginning with
Moreau, have made admirable studies. That the mob self is a
subconscious self is obvious. It is quite true, too, as Dr. Sidis
says, that America is peculiarly subject to epidemic mental
seizures, in fact, it may be said that democracy, as contrasted with
autocracy—and especially government by public opinion and popular
sentiment as expressed in newspapers—is government by the irrational
element of man. To discover how this can be cured, as a practical,
realized result, without the ends of government being narrowed to
the good of an individual or class, is our great problem. Prof.
James seems to think that this part is the best. We will defer to
his judgment, but certainly a great subject here remains virgin
ground for a writer of power.
[End quote]
That should be read together with the quote - from the same year, 1898 -
that Clark found in CP 1.654 (in "Practical Concerns and the Wisdom of
Sentiment" in "Vitally Important Topics") http://www.textlog.de/4277.html :
Common sense, which is the resultant of the traditional
experience of mankind, witnesses unequivocally that the heart is
more than the head, and is in fact everything in our highest
concerns, thus agreeing with my unproved logical theorem; and those
persons who think that sentiment has no part in common sense forget
that the dicta of common sense are objective facts, not the way some
dyspeptic may feel, but what the healthy, natural, normal democracy
thinks. And yet when you open the next new book on the philosophy of
religion that comes out, the chances are that it will be written by
an intellectualist who in his preface offers you his metaphysics as
a guide for the soul, talking as if philosophy were one of our
deepest concerns. How can the writer so deceive himself?
_The Nation_ 85 (12 September 1907) 229: NOTES Peirce: _Contributions to
The Nation_ 3:290
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22We+fear+that+Mr.+Stickney+is+too+optimistic%22
Albert Stickney's "Organized Democracy" (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) is
one of those radical pleas for political reconstruction which,
however little likely to be adopted or even seriously considered,
are not without usefulness as criticisms of existing political
evils. Mr. Stickney is convinced not only that we have not true
democracy in this country, but also that we cannot have true
democracy so long as the present electoral and administrative
systems prevail. Under popular election of all officials for fixed
terms, joined to the party system, all that the voter can do is to
vote for the candidate of this or that machine; his own personal
choice, if he have one, he cannot possibly register. The remedy Mr.
Stickney urges is the establishment, in local, State, and Federal
Government, of a system of single-headed administration, with the
heads of departments controlled directly by a Legislature the
members of which are popularly chosen by viva voce vote. For tenure
during short terms there would be substituted tenure during good
behavior. Congress, for example, would become a body of one house
with the power of removing the President, but without control over
subordinate appointments. We fear that Mr. Stickney is too
optimistic, and too little appreciative of the difficulty in this
country of achieving reforms by wholesale; but his shrewd
observations and obvious seriousness make his book not
uninteresting. Incidentally, we commend to the curious the
extraordinary punctuation of the volume.
[End quote]
Of course we know that Peirce believed that people who won't think ought
to be enslaved. 1908 to Lady Welby
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Folly+in+politics+cannot+go+farther+than+English+liberalism%22
:
Being a convinced Pragmaticist in Semeiotic, naturally and
necessarily nothing can appear to me sillier than rationalism; and
folly in politics cannot go further than English liberalism. The
people ought to be enslaved; only the slaveholders ought to practice
the virtues that alone can maintain their rule. England will
discover too late that it has sapped the foundations of its culture.
[...]
[End quote]
Douglas R. Anderson discusses Peirce and politics in the anthology _The
Rule of Reason_, from which I drew that quote. That passage appears also
in the Peirce collection _Values in a Universe of Chance_ p. 402 (in
"Science and Religion")
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Folly+in+politics+cannot+go+farther+than+English+liberalism%22
, and therein Peirce goes on to predict that murderous
labor-organizations will become the new ruling class, in which Peirce
sees problems and some reasons for hope.
Kloesel in 1988 and Norbert Wiley in 1995 and 2003 quoted Peirce from MS
645
http://cdclv.unlv.edu/pragmatism/wiley_pragma_demo.html
If they were to come to know me better they might learn to think me
ultra-conservative. I am, for example, an old-fashioned christian, a
believer in the efficacy of prayer, an opponent of female suffrage
and of universal male suffrage, in favor of letting business-methods
develop without the interference of law, a disbeliever in democracy,
etc. etc.
[End quote]
Hoopes also quoted most of that last passage in _Community Denied: The
Wrong Turn of Pragmatic Liberalism_, page 19. MS 645 is dated 1909-10,
here is the Robin Catalogue entry:
645. How to Define (Definition: 3rd Draught)
A. MS., n.p., December 22 - January 12, 1910, pp. 1-26, with a
variant p. 20.
Three studies distinguished (phaneroscopy, logic, and psychology)
and their order of dependence established. Feeling, volition, and
thought. In regard to feeling, Hume is in error, for he is committed
to the view that vividness is an element of a sensequality. The
three modes of separating the elements of a thought-object are
precision, dissociation, and discrimination. Volition and purpose.
Resemblances as residing in the interpretation of secondary
feelings. CSP's essential conservatism. He warns, however, that
self-criticism, carried too far, leads to exaggerated distrust.
Best, Ben
On 11/23/2016 8:24 PM, sb wrote:
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