C.S. Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 5.119

Therefore, if you ask me what part Qualities  can play in the economy of the universe,  I shall reply that the universe is  a vast representamen,  a great symbol of God's purpose, working out its conclusions in living realities.  Now every symbol must have, organically attached to it,  its Indices of Reactions and its Icons of Qualities;   and such part as these reactions and these qualities  play in an argument that, they of course,  play in the universe --  that Universe being precisely an argument.   In the little bit that you or I  can make out of this huge demonstration,  our perceptual judgments are the premisses for us  and these perceptual judgments have icons  as their predicates,  in which icons Qualities are immediately presented.  

But what is first for us is not first in nature.   The premisses of Nature's own process  are all the independent uncaused elements of facts  that go to make up the variety of nature  which the necessitarian supposes to have been  all in existence from the foundation of the world,  but which the Tychist supposes  are continually receiving new accretions.  These premisses of nature, however,  though they are not the perceptual facts  that are premisses to us,  nevertheless must resemble them in being premisses.   We can only imagine what they are  by comparing them with the premisses for us.   As premisses they must involve Qualities.  Now as to their function in the economy of the Universe.   The Universe as an argument is necessarily  a great work of art, a great poem --  for every fine argument is a poem and a symphony -- just as every true poem is a sound argument.   But let us compare it rather with a painting --  with an impressionist seashore piece --  then every Quality in a Premiss is one of the  elementary colored particles of the Painting;   they are all meant to go together  to make up the intended Quality  that belongs to the whole as whole.   That total effect is beyond our ken;   but we can appreciate in some measure  the resultant Quality of parts of the whole --  which Qualities result from  the combinations of elementary Qualities  that belong to the premisses ...

C.S. Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 5.119

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