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"However, there is another way of viewing the matter. . . . Granted that an actual feeling is always Second (because [r]elative to a stimulus), does it follow that the stimulating entity is, in its turn, relative to the feeling it elicits? . .

"The concretely, though relatively, First or nonrelative is ... simply the earlier in the causal-temporal series. What about the absolutely nonrelative, if there can be such a thing? Must it not be some primordial and eternal essence, or realm of essences, the pure possibility of existence in general, which is prior to any particular situation? Theologically this must somehow coincide with the 'primordial nature' of God, or with [God's] primordial creativity or power.... Pure Firstness must be completely abstract, for by definition it is independent of, and so abstractable from, all particular concrete cases" (460).

. [I]n itself, say as an event, it need not be taken as relative to the feeling. Rather the feeling is Second to the thing felt, which in this context is First; and this relation is not reversible or symmetrical. . . . Nevertheless, the First event to which the Second feeling is relative may itself, in another context, be relative. As an event it may be relative to a still earlier event. In.deed, it may itself be a prior responsive or reactive feeling, with its own stimulus. . . . Thus we have a chain of Seconds which, reversing the direction of analysis, is also a chain of Firsts. The Firstness or Absoluteness is, to be sure, relative only, but for all that, perfectly definite and genuine. The earlier experience was strictly independent of its successor, though not of its predecessor" ("Peirce's 'One Contribution''': 459). 

"The concretely, though relatively, First or nonrelative is . . . simply the earlier in the causal-temporal series. What about the absolutely nonrelative, if there can be such a thing? Must it not be some primordial and eternal essence, or realm of essences, the pure possibility of existence in general, which is prior to any particular situation? Theologically this must somehow coincide with the 'primordial nature' of God, or with [God's] primordial creativity or power.... Pure Firstness must be completely abstract, for by definition it is independent of, and so abstractable from, all particular concrete cases" (460).

[I]n itself, say as an event, it need not be taken as relative to the feeling. Rather the feeling is Second to the thing felt, which in this context is First; and this relation is not reversible or symmetrical. ... Nevertheless, the First event to which the Second feeling is relative may itself, in another context, be relative. As an event it may be relative to a still earlier event. In.deed, it may itself be a prior responsive or reactive feeling, with its own stimulus.... Thus we have a chain of Seconds which, reversing the direction of analysis, is also a chain of Firsts. The Firstness or Absoluteness is, to be sure, relative only, but for all that, perfectly definite and genuine. The earlier experience was strictly independent of its successor, though not of its predecessor" ("Peirce's 'One Contribution''': 459).  

"[E]ven the relatively nonrelative is, in a sense, abstract.... [T]he relatively absolute is also relatively abstract. And moreover, we may also say ... that the relatively nonrelative is (in a similarly relative sense) possibility rather than actuality. Yesterday, to be sure, was no 'mere possibility,' it~was possibility, relatively speaking, for it furnished that possibility of which today is the actualization. It was the possibility of a certain kind of successor which otherwise would not have been possible. So absolutely speaking;. Firstness as such means the possibility and the essence, not the actual existence, of feeling. Only so far as the earlier feeling was itself a Second was it, too, actual" (460 f.) 

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