21

36

scratched with a knife, is hard just the same when
nothing sharp presses upon it, or even if nothing
sharp ever presses upon it. Its hardness,
in that case, is nothing but an unrealized possibility.
Now what is that? It is certainly nothing that reacts no subject
of reaction. It does not belong, then, to the category of
Secondness. I call this element of thought the
conceived being such as it is positively, regardless
of ought else, the element of Firstness. Everything
you can possibly think of has its firstness.
It is just what it is in itself is thought to be or otherwise is regardless of other
things. It must be conceived to be something in
itself in order to be in relation to other things.

But it is impossible to resolve everything in
our thoughts into those two elements. We may say