Bulletin of the Santayana Society, No. 26 Fall 2008

              Counting Categories with
Peirce and Santayana
Peirce, Santayana, and the Large Facts
Nearly thirty years ago John Lachs delivered a Presidential Address entitled
'Peirce, Santayana, and the Large Facts' to the Society for the Advancement
of American Philosophy.1 By the iarge facts' Lachs refers to the moral truths
of the world or what Santayana calls 'the relation of man and his spirit to the
universe'.2 As Lachs showed, there is little agreement between Peirce and Santayana
over the large facts of life, Peirce's view of the universe is essentially optimistic or as
Lachs neatly puts it 'upward bound'.3 Peirce believed in the reality of a world-
creative God that manifests the force of love in a universe that is evolving into 'an
absolutely perfect, rational, and symmetrical system, in which mind is at last
crystallized in the infinitely distant future.'4 This optimistic view of the large facts
stands in stark contrast to the view grimly expressed in the opening lines of one of
Santayana's soliloquies composed during the carnage of World War I.
This war will kill the belief in progress, and it was high time. Progress is often a fact:
granted a definite end to be achieved, we may sometimes observe a continuous approach
towards achieving it, as for instance towards cutting off a leg neatly when it has been
smashed; and such progress is to be desired in all human arts. But belief in progress, like
belief in the number three, is sheer superstition, a mad notion that because some idea — here
the idea of continuous change for the better — has been realized somewhere, that idea was a
power which realized itself there fatally, and which must be secretly realizing itself
everywhere else, even where the facts contradict it.5
As this passage suggests, Santayana's view of the large facts is not optimistic or
upward bound; but nor is it altogether downward bound. For Santayana the universe is
not malign but rather non-rational, largely chaotic, and Godless.6    The material
1 The Address by Lachs was later published in The Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society,
Vol. XVI, 1980: 3-13. This paper was read to the George Santayana Society during its annual
meeting, held in conjunction with that of the American Philosophical Association, in Baltimore on
December 29,2007. My thanks to Paul Forster and Angus Kerr-Lawson for their many comments
and suggestions that helped shape this paper. I also extend my sincere thanks to John Lachs for
delivering what for me turned out to be a very inspiring Presidential Address to the Society for the
Advancement of American Philosophy. Lastly, I am grateful to all those who attended the meeting
of the George Santayana Society in Baltimore on December 29th, 2007, and participated in a
lively, memorable discussion. It is an honor that Peter Hare, who passed away a few days after
the meeting, was a leading voice in that discussion.
2 Scepticism and Animal Faith (New York: Dover Publications, 1955), p. viii. (Hereafter cited as
SAF followed by page number.) Quoted in Lachs p. 4.
3 Lachs p. 6
4 CP 6.33. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols. 1-6 ed. C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss,
vols. 7-8 ed. A. Burks. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. References are of the form
"CP n.m" - to volume n, paragraph m. Also quoted in Lachs p. 6.
5 Soliloquies In England and Later Soliloquies (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press,
[1922] 1967), pp. 2-7-208.
6 A distinction must be made here. For Santayana the universe is in once sense inherently chaotic
since matter is in constant flux. Yet he is also careful to note that 'chaos must have a formal order