Charles Peirce developed his cosmological system in the series of articles published in The Monist from 1891 to 1893. Peirce constructed his system on the foundation of the three doctrines of “Tychism”, “Synechism” and “Agapism”. Of these three doctrines the least known theory is “Agapism”. In this paper, I try to present the material necessary for the understanding of this doctrine. Peirce’s agapism or the theory of evolutionary love is a curious mixture of his criticism of Darwinism and his sympathy to Henry James, Sr.’s Swedenborgian theology. He contends that the evolution of the universe cannot be accounted for by means of Darwinian logic of chance. It is his contention that the process of cosmological evolution should be interpreted as the work of divine creative love, whose essence is to let the creatures be independent from, but at the same time, return to harmony with the creator. This doctrine of creation as evolution is adopted by Peirce and reinterpreted into a complex doctrine about the interactive relationship between mind and matter. The resultant picture of the evolution of the universe is that of getting more and more lawful but reasonable.
