181.1-3 I will . . . one, two, three.] This third chapter is closely connected to the third chapter (numbered IIa) of "One, Two, Three" (W5:295-98, 1886), which also describes the appearance of the three conceptions "in metaphysics" and starts with the Presocratics. The table of contents (sel. 22) reveals that Peirce intended to devote this chapter to the theory of cognition. Its Presocratic underpinning and the connection with W5:295-98 suggests that the central part of this chapter would have discussed the cognitive passage from the many to the one (the reduction of the manifold to unity).

181.4-5 The first of all . . . made.] The following is an incomplete list of citations, paraphrases and notes on presocratic philosophers compiled by Peirce possibly for this chapter. The original document consisted of three large typed sheets, but only the last two are extant (R 1574:217-19). The missing first sheet probably contained entries starting with Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. The text begins in the middle of entry 19 and ends with entry 56. Entries 20, 22, 26, 29, 36, 38, 42, 43, 48, and 50-53 are marked with an x in the margin, and entry 31 is marked with a vertical line. The remarks following entry 25 link it to Peirce's reflection on the categories in chapter 1 (see also W5:295-98, 304):

[. . . ] things. Identical with the world. The all, as being thought. [Xenophanes.]
20. That all things are one and that one unchangeable, the absolute. [Xenophanes.]
21. That unity and eternity are necessary characters of reality. [Parmenides.] This seems to be an exaggeration of consistency. That is, the truth is one, error only manifold.
22. Plurality and variability are appearances only. [Parmenides.]
23. The existent as the "full." Only being is and nothing is altogether not and cannot be thought. That is to say, you cannot even imagine to yourself a thing in a state of non-existence. [Parmenides.]
24. There is no becoming. What is neither was nor will be, but just is. [Parmenides.] This is the same as 21.
25. Now is at once all one indivisible. [Parmenides.] This seems to be the very apotheosis of the First, its intrinsic manifoldness being however overlooked. Remember that that manifoldness is only potential. But after all, there is a sort of synthetical idea here. The freshness, newness and life of the First is overlooked.
26. Logos, or reason, as the knowledge of the one and therefore true and better than the senses which show us the variable. [Parmenides.]
27. The ethereal fire of light is being, and the night, the dark, the heavy, the cold, the earth, is non-being placed beside it. [Parmenides.]
28. Being is active, non-being is passive. [Parmenides.]
29. Besides being and non-being is the mythic form of the goddess who guides all things. [Parmenides, according to Theophrastus; but it seems hard to believe that he admitted a third, after his "Being only is."]
30. He devised Love the very first of all the gods. [Parmenides as quoted verbatim by Plato.] But this doctrine was of course infinitely more ancient. Hesiod, quoted by Plato in the same place in the Symposium, puts Chaos first, earth second, and love third.
31. I remark that the view of Parmenides is that if we were to find the ultimate explanation of things, that would be absolute unity, for if not, it would require further explanation.
32. The like knows its like, the corpse feels cold, and the man with more of the heavenly fire in his composition knows more of the truth. [Parmenides.]
33. What thinks is extended in space. [Parmenides.]
34. Continuity impossible. [Zeno.]
35. That there is no void. Implies the conception of a vacuum, which I suspect is not a very ancient idea, for I have often seen persons who had a difficulty with it. [Melissus of Samos.]
36. All things in constant flux. Cannot descend twice into the same stream. [Heraclitus.]
37. All comes from one, and one from all. [Heraclitus.] This shows clearly enough the synthetic idea in the One of the ancients. Heraclitus also calls it the One for all.
38. Strife, opposites contemporaneous in change. [Heraclitus.] Polemos is the Greek word.
39. The idea of action and reaction. That which strives against another supports itself. [Heraclitus.]
40. Fate is Heraclitus but of course infinitely earlier.
41. Chresmosyne, divided being. [Heraclitus.]
42. The same stream and not the same. [Heraclitus.]
43. Elements, or roots of things roots of all, that is different kinds of simple matter. Idea due entirely to Empedocles.
44. Attraction and repulsion, observed by Thales in the case of the magnet, for which reason he said the magnet has life; were regarded by Empedocles as general phenomena of nature, though he calls them by psychical terms Love and Hate, or Affection and inveterate Hate, philotes or storge and neikos or kotos. But they do not act on any mechanical or fixed laws.
45. Attractions are the result of development.
46. Non-being is the vacuum. [Leucippus.]
47. Effluences. [Empedocles.]
48. Impact the only form of force. [Democritus.]
49. As Leucippus insisted on there being a non-being because he was convinced by the arguments of Parmenides that that was the only way in which genesis was possible, and he could not give that up, it would follow I should think that he must have believed that matter did have a genesis. Therefore that doctrine of the imperishability and eternity of atoms could not have been his but must have belonged to Democritus. No, this is not so.
50. All the properties of things depend on the form, magnitude, arrangement, and position of their atoms. [Democritus.]
51. Matter is inert. [Anaxagoras.]
52. There is no fate. [Anaxagoras.]
53. There is no chance. [Anaxagoras.] This is a highly original doctrine.
54. Like is not perceived by like, but by unlike. [Anaxagoras.] Action & reaction.
55. Mind as something utterly unlike matter belongs apparently to Anaxagoras. Mind is simple.
56. Of all matters the measure is man; of those that are how they are and of those that are not how they are not. [Protagoras.] This is of course the principle of relativity, and very near if not quite the principle of idealism.

181.5-7 Thales . . . the beginning;] The first of the Ionians to search for a natural explanation of the origin and constitution of the universe, Thales of Miletus (6th century B.C.) thought that the arche was water, maybe in a physical sense as Aristotle suggests, but more probably in a metaphysical sense. Anaximander believed it to be the apeiron, an infinite reservoir of swirling possibilities according to one plausible reading, endowed with a power of determination (for which reason he could have been one of Peirce's favorite Presocratics). His follower Anaximenes theorized that the basic principle was air, more determinate than the somewhat ad-hoc apeiron, but less so than water.

181.22-23 Baconian idea.] Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher. Peirce gives a similar account of the "Baconian idea" in 1886, and calls it "Baconian induction" (W5:296). In "The Fixation of Belief" Baconian induction marks the step from the a priori method to the scientific method (W3:253, 1877). Bacon's own account is given in his Novum Organum (1620), where he sought to replace Aristotle's deductive logic with an inductive method of interpreting nature.

181.23-24 not the indeterminacy of homogeneity.] This is most likely a reference to Herbert Spencer, who holds in his First Principles (1862) that the initial state of the world is an unstable homogeneity that develops through a necessary and uniform process of evolution into a coherent heterogeneity. See especially chapter 13 "The Instability of the Homogeneous." Peirce refers to this idea for the first time in "Design and Chance," W4:548 (1883-84).