In 1851, the English journalist and social researcher Henry Mayhew, discussing means to "a more general and equal division of the wealth of the country", characterized agapism as "the voluntary sharing of individual possessions with the less fortunate or successful members of the community" and as the alternative to communism ("the abolition of all rights to individual property").
[1] In 1893, the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce used the word "agapism" for the view that creative love is operative in the cosmos.
Peirce regarded this process as a mode of evolution of the cosmos and its parts, and he called the process "agapasm", such that: "The good result is here brought to pass, first, by the bestowal of spontaneous energy by the parent upon the offspring, and, second, by the disposition of the latter to catch the general idea of those about it and thus to subserve the general purpose.
The doctrines which represent these as severally of principal importance we may term tychasticism, anancasticism, and agapasticism.
On the other hand the mere propositions that absolute chance, mechanical necessity, and the law of love are severally operative in the cosmos may receive the names of tychism, anancism, and agapism."