Continuing from Lowell Lecture 3.8, https://fromthepage.com/jeffdown1/c-s-peirce-manuscripts/ms-464-465-1903-low ell-lecture-iii-3rd-draught/display/13916:
I will just mention that among Firstnesses there is no distinction of the Genuine and the Degenerate, while among Thirdnesses we find not only a Genuine but two distinct grades of Degeneracy. [CP 4.530] But now I wish to call your attention to a kind of distinction which affects Firstness more than it does Secondness, and Secondness more than it does Thirdness. This distinction arises from the circumstance that where you have a triplet ∴ you have 3 pairs; and where you have a pair, you have 2 units. Thus, Secondness is an essential part of Thirdness though not of Firstness, and Firstness is an Essential element of both Secondness and Thirdness. Hence there is such a thing as the Firstness of Secondness and such a thing as the Firstness of Thirdness; and there is such a thing as the Secondness of Thirdness. But there is no Secondness of Pure Firstness and no Thirdness of Pure Firstness or Secondness. When you strive to get the purest conceptions you can of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness,- thinking of Quality, Reaction, and Mediation,- what you are striving to apprehend is Pure Firstness, the Firstness of Secondness,- that is what Secondness is, of itself,- and the Firstness of Thirdness. When you contrast the blind compulsion in an Event of Reaction considered as something which happens and which of its nature can never happen again, since you cannot cross the same river twice, when, I say, you contrast this compulsion with the logical necessitation of a meaning considered as something that has no being at all except so far as it actually gets embodied in an event of thought, and you regard this logical necessitation as a sort of actual compulsion, since the meaning must actually be embodied, what you are thinking of is a Secondness involved in Thirdness. [531] A Firstness is exemplified in every quality of a total feeling. It is perfectly simple and without parts; and everything has its quality. Thus the tragedy of King Lear has its Firstness, its flavor sui generis. That wherein all such qualities agree is universal Firstness, the very being of Firstness. The word possibility fits it, except that possibility implies a relation to what exists, while universal Firstness is the mode of being of itself. That is why a new word was required for it. Otherwise, “Possibility” would have answered the purpose. http://gnusystems.ca/Lowell3.htm }{ Peirce’s Lowell Lectures of 1903
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