“Were the ends of a person already explicit, there would be no room for development, for growth, for life; and consequently there would be no personality.”

— Charles Sanders Peirce

The Law of Mind (1892)
Context: Were the ends of a person already explicit, there would be no room for development, for growth, for life; and consequently there would be no personality. The mere carrying out of predetermined purposes is mechanical. This remark has an application to the philosophy of religion. It is that genuine evolutionary philosophy, that is, one that makes the principle of growth a primordial element of the universe, is so far from being antagonistic to the idea of a personal creator, that it is really inseparable from that idea; while a necessitarian religion is in an altogether false position and is destined to become disintegrated. But a pseudo-evolutionism which enthrones mechanical law above the principle of growth is at once scientifically unsatisfactory, as giving no possible hint of how the universe has come about, and hostile to all hopes of personal relations to God.

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Charles Sanders Peirce 121

American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist 1839–1914

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