( 1 ) Page 15: Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity. Each actual occasion contributes to the circumstances of its origin additional formative elements deepening its own peculiar individuality. Consciousness is only the last and greatest of such elements by which the selective character of the individual obscures the external totality from which it originates and which it embodies. An actual individual, of such higher grade, has truck with the totality of things by reason of its sheer actuality; but it has attained its individual depth of being by a selective emphasis limited to its own purposes. The task of philosophy is to recover the totality obscured by the selection. It replaces in rational experience what has been submerged in the higher sensitive experience and has been sunk yet deeper by the initial operations of consciousness itself. The selectiveness of individual experience is moral so far as it conforms to the balance of importance disclosed in the rational vision; and conversely the conversion of the intellectual insight into an emotional force corrects the sensitive experience in the direction of morality. The correction is in proportion to the rationality of the insight. Morality of outlook is inseparably conjoined with generality of outlook. The antithesis between the general good and the individual interest can be abolished only when the individual is such that its interest is the general good, thus exemplifying the loss of the minor intensities in order to find them again with finer composition in a wider sweep of interest.
( 2 ) Page 18: 'Actual entities' also termed 'actual occasions' are the final real things of which the world is made up. There is no going behind actual entities to find anything [28] more real. They differ among themselves: God is an actual entity, and so is the most trivial puff of existence in far-off empty space. But, though there are gradations of importance, an diversities of function, yet in the principles which actuality exemplifies all are on the same level. The final facts are, all alike, actual entities; and these actual entities are drops of experience, complex and interdependent.
( 3 ) Page 21: 'creativity' is the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact. It is that ultimate principle by which the many, which are the universe disjunctively, become the one actual occasion, which is the universe conjunctively. It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity.
( 4 ) Page 21: 'creativity' is the principle of novelty. An actual occasion is a novel entity diverse from any entity in the 'many' which it unifies. Thus 'creativity' introduces novelty into the content of the many, which ate the [32] universe disjunctively. The 'creative advance' is the application of this ultimate principle of creativity to each novel situation which it originates.
( 5 ) Page 21: 'Together' is a generic term covering the various special ways in which various sorts of entities are 'together' in any one actual occasion. Thus 'together' presupposes the notions 'creativity ' 'many ' 'one ' 'identity' and 'diversity.' The ultimate metaphysical principle is the advance from disjunction to conjunction, creating a novel entity other than the entities given in disjunction. The novel entity is at once the togetherness of the 'many' which it finds, and also it is one among the disjunctive 'many' which it leaves; it is a novel entity. disjunctively among the many entities which it synthesizes. The many become one, and are increased by one. In their natures. entities are disjunctively 'many' in process of passage into conjunctive unity. This category of the Ultimate replaces Aristotle's category of 'primary substance.'
( 6 ) Page 22:(i) Actual Entities (also termed actual occasions) or Final Realities, or Res. Verae.
( 7 ) Page 22:(i) That the actual world is a process, and that the process is the becoming of actual entities. Thus actual entities are creatures, they are also termed 'actual occasions.'
( 8 ) Page 29:[44] This repudiation directly contradicts Kant's 'First Analogy of Experience' in either of its ways of phrasing ( 1st or 2nd edition).In the philosophy of organism it is not 'substance' which is permanent, but 'form.' Forms suffer changing relations; actual entities 'perpetually perish' subjectively, but are immortal objectively. Actuality in perishing acquires objectivity, while it loses subjective immediacy. It loses the final causation which is its internal principle of unrest, and it acquires efficient causation whereby it is a ground of obligation characterizing the creativity. actual occasions in their 'formal' constitutions are devoid of all indetermination. Potentiality has passed into realization. They are complete and determinate matter of fact, devoid of all indecision. They form the ground of obligation. But eternal objects, and propositions, and some more complex sorts of contrasts, involve in their own natures indecision. They are, like all entities, potentials for the process of becoming. Their ingression expresses the definiteness of the actuality in question. But their own natures do not in themselves disclose in what actual entities this potentiality of ingression is realized. Thus they involve indetermination in a sense more complete than do the former set.
( 9 ) Page 31:[46] THE primordial created fact is the unconditioned conceptual valuation of the entire multiplicity of eternal objects. This is the 'primordial nature' of God. By reason of this complete valuation, the objectification of God in each derivate actual entity results in a graduation of the relevance of eternal objects to the concrescent phases of that derivate occasion. There will be additional ground of relevance for select eternal objects by reason of their ingression into derivate actual entities belonging to the actual world of the concrescent occasion in question. But whether or no this be the case, there is always the definite relevance derived from God. Apart from God, eternal objects unrealized in the actual world would be relatively nonexistent for the concrescence in question. For effective relevance requires agency of comparison, and agency belongs exclusively to actual occasions. This divine ordering is itself matter of fact, thereby conditioning creativity. Thus possibility which transcends realized temporal matter of fact has a real relevance to the creative advance.' God is the primordial creature, but the description of his nature is not exhausted by this conceptual side of it. His 'consequent nature' results from his physical prehensions of the derivative actual entities (cf. Part v).
( 10 ) Page 35:[53] Finally. the extensive continuity of the physical universe has usually been construed to mean that there is a continuity of becoming. But if we admit that 'something becomes,' it is easy, by employing Zeno's method, to prove that there can be no continuity of becoming. There is a becoming of continuity, but no continuity of becoming. The actual occasions are the creatures which become, and they constitute a continuously extensive world. In other words, extensiveness becomes, but 'becoming' is not itself extensive. '
( 11 ) Page 36:Finally, in the cosmological scheme here outlined one implicit assumption of the philosophical tradition is repudiated. The assumption is that the basic elements of experience are to be described in terms of one, or all, of the three ingredients, consciousness, thought, sense-perception. The last term is used in the sense of 'conscious perception in the mode of presentational immediacy.' Also in practice sense-perception is narrowed down to visual perception. According to the philosophy of organism these three components are unessential elements in experience, either physical or mental. Any instance of experience is dipolar, whether that instance be God or an actual occasion of the world. The origination of God is from the mental pole, the origination of an actual occasion is from the physical pole; but in either case these elements, consciousness, thought, sense-perception, belong to the derivative 'impure' phases of the concrescence, if in any effective sense they enter at all. This repudiation is the reason why, in relation to the topic under discussion, the status of presentational immediacy is a recurrent theme throughout the subsequent parts of these lectures.
( 12 ) Page 73: Newton in his description of space and time has confused what is 'real' potentiality with what is actual fact. He has thereby been led to diverge from the judgment of 'the vulgar' who "conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects." The philosophy of organism starts by agreeing with 'the vulgar' except that the term 'sensible object' is replaced by 'actual entity'; so as to free our notions from participation in an epistemological theory as to sense-perception. When we further consider how to adjust Newton's other descriptions to the organic theory, the surprising fact emerges that we must identify the atomized quantum of extension correlative to an actual entity, with New-ton's absolute place and absolute duration. Newton's proof that motion does not apply to absolute place, which in its nature is immovable, also holds. Thus an actual entity never moves: it is where it is and what it is. In order to emphasize this characteristic by a phrase connecting the notion of 'actual entity' more closely with our ordinary habits of thought, I will also use the term 'actual occasion' in the place of the term 'actual entity.' Thus the actual world is built up of actual occasions; and by the ontological principle whatever things there are in any sense of 'existence,' are de-rived by abstraction from actual occasions. I shall use the term 'event' in the more general sense of a nexus of actual occasions, inter-related in some determinate fashion in one extensive quantum. An actual occasion is the limiting type of an event with only one member.
( 13 ) Page 73: It is quite obvious that meanings have to be found for the notions of 'motion' and of 'moving bodies.' For the present, this enquiry must be postponed to a later chapter [ll4] (cf. Part Iv and also Ch. III of this part).It is Sufficient to say that a molecule in the sense of a moving body, with a history of local change, is not an actual occasion; it must therefore be some kind of nexus of actual occasions. In this sense it is an event, but not an actual occasion. The fundamental meaning of the notion of 'change' is 'the difference between actual occasions comprised in some determinate event.'
( 14 ) Page 75:phrase res vera in the same sense as that in which I have used the term 'actual.' It means 'existence' in the fullest sense of that term, beyond which there is no other. Descartes, indeed, would ascribe to God 'existence' in a generically different sense. In the philosophy of organism, as here developed, God's existence is not generically different from that of other actual entities, except that he is 'primordial' in a sense to be gradually explained . '.Descartes does not explicitly frame the definition of actuality in terms of the ontological principle, as given in section IV of this chapter, that actual occasions form the ground from which all other types of existence are derivative and abstracted; but he practically formulates an equivalent in subject-predicate phraseology, when he writes : "For this reason, when we perceive any attribute, we therefore conclude that some existing thing or substance to which it may be attributed, is necessarily present " 7 For Descartes the word 'substance' is the equivalent of my phrase 'actual occasion.' I refrain from the term 'substance ' for one reason because it suggests the subject-predicate notion, and for another reason because Descartes and Locke permit their substances to undergo adventures of changing qualifications, and thereby create difficulties. In the quotation from the second Meditation: "I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it," Descartes adopts the position that an act of experience is the primary type of actual occasion. But in his subsequent developments he assumes that his mental substances endure change. Here he goes beyond his argument. For each time he pronounces 'I am, I exist ' the actual occasion, which is the ego, is different; and the 'he' which is common to the two egos is an eternal object or, alternatively, the nexus of successive occasions. Also in the quotation from the first [117] Meditation he begins by appealing to an act of experience "I am here, seated by the fire. . . ." He then associates this act of experience with his body "these hands and body are mine." He then finally appeals for some final notion of actual entities in the remarkable sentence: "And for the same reason, although these general things, to wit, [a body], eyes, a head, hands, and such like, may be imaginary, we are bound at the same time to confess that there are at least some other objects yet more simple and more universal, which are real and true; and of these . . . all these images of things which dwell in out thoughts, whether true and real or false and fantastic, are formed."
( 15 ) Page 76:In this function the animal body does not differ in principle from the rest of the past actual . but it does differ in principle from the rest of the past actual world; but it does differ in an intimacy of association by reason of which its spatial and temporal connections obtain some definition in the experience of the subject. What is vague for the rest of the world has obtained some additional measure of distinctness for the bodily organs. But, in principle, it would be equally true to say, 'The actual world is mine.' Descartes also asserts that "objects yet more simple and more universal, which are real and true" are what the "images of things which dwell in our thoughts" are formed of. This does not seem to accord with his theory of perception, of a later date, stated in his principles, part IV, 196, 197, 198. In the later theory the emphasis is on the iudicium, in the sense of 'inference,' and not in the sense of inspectio of realitas objectiva. But it does accord with the organic theory, that the objectifications of other actual occasions form the given data from which an actual occasion originates. He has also brought the body into its immediate association with the act of experience. Descartes, with Newton, assumes that the extensive continuum is actual in the full sense of being an actual entity. But he refrains from the additional material bodies which Newton provides. Also in his efforts to guard his representative 'ideas' from the fatal gap between mental symbol and actuality symbolized, he practically, in some sentences, expresses the doctrine of objectification here put forward. Thus:
( 16 ) Page 77:'formally.' In this sense, actual entities are extensive, [ll9] since they arise out of a potentiality for division, which in actual fact is not divided (cf. Part Iv). It is for this reason, as stated above, that the phrase 'actual occasion' is used in the place of 'actual entity. . . . Descartes' doctrine of the physical world as exhibiting an extensive plenum of actual entities is practically the same as the 'organic' doctrine. But Descartes' bodies have to move, and this presupposition introduces
( 17 ) Page 77:new obscurities. It is exactly at this point that Newton provides a clear conception in comparison with that of Descartes. In the 'organic' doctrine, motion is not attributable to an actual occasion.
( 18 ) Page 77: In the 'organic' theory, (i) there is only one type of temporal actual entity; (ii) each such actual entity is extensive, (iii) from the standpoint of any one actual entity, the 'given' actual world is a nexus of actual entities, transforming the potentiality of the extensive scheme into a plenum of actual occasions; (iv) in this plenum, motion cannot be significantly attributed to any actual occasion, (v) the plenum is continuous in respect to the pot6ntiality from which it arises, but each actual entity is atomic, (vi) the term 'actual occasion' is used synonymously with 'actual entity'; but chiefly when its character of extensiveness has some direct relevance to the discussion, either extensiveness in the form of temporal extensiveness, that is to say 'duration,' or extensiveness in the form of spatial extension, or in the more complete signification of spatio-temporal extensiveness.
( 19 ) Page 80: This is a theory of monads; but it differs from Leibniz's in that his monads change. In the organic theory, they merely become. Each monadic creature is a mode of the process of 'feeling' the world, of housing the world in one unit of complex feeling, in every way determinate. Such a unit is an 'actual occasion , it is the ultimate creature derivative from the creative process.
( 20 ) Page 80: The term 'event' is used in a more general sense. An event is a nexus of actual occasions inter-related in some determinate fashion in some extensive quantum: it is either a nexus in its formal completeness, or it is an objectified nexus. One actual occasion is a limiting type of event. The most general sense of the meaning of change is 'the differences between actual occasions in one event.' For example, a molecule is a historic route of actual occasions; and such a route is an 'event.' Now the motion of the molecule is nothing else than the differences between the successive occasions of its life-history in respect to the extensive quanta from which they arise, [125] and the changes in the molecule are the consequential differences in the actual occasions.
( 21 ) Page 81: The organic doctrine is closer to Descartes than to Newton. Also it is close to Spinoza; but Spinoza bases his philosophy upon the monistic substance, of which the actual occasions are inferior modes. The philosophy of organism inverts this point of view.
( 22 ) Page 86:
( 23 ) Page 88: In the subsequent discussion, 'actual entity' will be taken to mean a conditioned actual entity of the temporal world, unless God is expressly included in the discussion. The term 'actual occasion' will always exclude God from its scope.
( 24 ) Page 89: For example, the life of a man is a historic route of actual occasions which in a marked degree-- to be discussed more fully later--inherit from each other. That set of occasions, dating from his first acquirement of the
( 25 ) Page 92: A society does not in any sense create the complex of eternal objects which constitutes its defining characteristic. It only elicits that complex into importance for its members, and secures the reproduction of its membership. In speaking of a society unless the context expressly requires another interpretation 'membership' will always refer to the actual occasions, and not to subordinate enduring objects composed of actual occasions such as the life of an electron or of a man. These latter societies are the strands of 'personal' order which enter into many societies; generally speaking, whenever we are concerned with occupied space, we are dealing with this restricted type of corpuscular societies; and whenever we are thinking of the physical field in empty space, we are dealing with societies of the wider type. It seems as if the careers of waves of light illustrate the transition from the more restricted type to the wider type.
( 26 ) Page 101: There are two ways in which structured societies have solved this problem. Both ways depend on that enhancement of the mental pole, which is a factor in intensity of experience. One way is by eliciting a massive average objectification of a nexus, while eliminating the detailed diversities of the various members of the nexus in question. This method, in fact, employs the device of blocking out unwelcome detail. It depends on the fundamental truth that objectification is abstraction. It utilizes this abstraction inherent in objectification so as to dismiss the thwarting elements of a nexus into negative prehensions. At the same time the complex intensity in the structured society is supported by the massive objectifications of the many environmental nexus, each in its unity as one nexus, and not in its multiplicity as many actual occasions.
( 27 ) Page 101: The close association of all physical bodies, organic and [155] inorganic alike, with 'presented loci' definable " by straight lines, suggests that this development of mentality is characteristic of the actual occasions which make up the structured societies which we know as 'material bodies.' This close association is evidenced by the importance of 'acceleration' in the science of dynamics. For 'acceleration' is nothing else than a mode of estimating the shift from one family of presented loci' to another such family (cf. Part Iv).
( 28 ) Page 105: The primordial appetitions which jointly constitute God's purpose are seeking intensity, and not preservation. Because they are primordial, there is nothing to preserve. He, in his primordial nature, is unmoved by love for this particular, or that particular; for in this foundational process of creativity, there are no preconstituted particulars. In the foundations of his being, God is indifferent alike to preservation and to novelty. [16l] He cares not whether an immediate occasion be old or new, so far as concerns derivation from its ancestry. His aim 16 for it is depth of satisfaction as an intermediate step towards the fulfillment of his own being. His tenderness is directed towards each actual occasion, as it arises.
( 29 ) Page 108: The state of things, according to the philosophy of organism, is very different from the scholastic view of St. Thomas Aquinas, of the mind as informing the body. The living body is a coordination of high-grade actual occasions; but in a living body of a low type the occasions are much nearer to a democracy. In a living body of a high type there are grades of occasions so coordinated by their paths of inheritance through the body, that a peculiar richness of inheritance is enjoyed by various occasions in some parts of the body. Finally, the brain is coordinated so that a peculiar richness of inheritance is enjoyed now by this and now by that part; and thus there is produced the presiding personality at that moment in the body. Owing to the delicate organization of the body, there is a returned influence, an inheritance of character derived from the presiding occasion and modifying the subsequent occasions through the rest of the body.
( 30 ) Page 109: We must remember the extreme generality of the notion of an enduring object --a genetic character inherited through a historic route of actual occasions. Some kinds of enduring objects form material bodies, others do not. But just as the difference between living and non-living occasions is not sharp. but more or less, so the distinction between an enduring object which is an atomic material body and one which is not is again more or less. Thus the question as to whether to call an enduring object a transition of matter or of character is very much a verbal question as to where you draw the line between the various properties (cf. the way in which the distinction between matter and radiant energy has now vanished).
( 31 ) Page 110:[168] So far the discussion has chiefly concentrated upon the discrimination of the modes of functioning which in germ, or in mere capacity, are represented in the constitution of each actual entity. The presumption that there is only one genus of actual entities constitutes an ideal of cosmological theory to which the philosophy of organism endeavours to conform. The description of the generic character of an actual entity should include God, as well as the lowliest actual occasion, though there is a specific difference between the nature of God and that of any occasion. Also the differences between actual occasions, arising from the characters of their data, and from the narrowness and widths of their feelings, and from the comparative importance of various stages, enable a classification to be made whereby these occasions are gathered into various types. From the metaphysical standpoint these types are not to be sharply discriminated; as a matter of empirical observation, the occasions do seem to fall into fairly distinct classes.
( 32 ) Page 112:@Intensity is the reward of narrowness. The domination of the environment by a few social groups is the factor producing both the vagueness of discrimination between actual entities and the intensification of relevance of common characteristics. These are the two requisites for narrowness. The lower organisms have low-grade types of narrowness, the higher organisms have intensified contrasts in the higher categories. In describing the capacities, realized or unrealized, of an actual occasion, we have, with Locke, tacitly taken human experience as an example upon which to found the generalized description required for metaphysics. But when we turn to the lower organisms we have first to determine which among such capacities fade from realization into irrelevance, that is to say, by comparison with human experience which is our standard.
( 33 ) Page 115: The simplest grade of actual occasions must be conceived as experiencing a few sensa, with the minimum of patterned contrast. The sensa are then experienced emotionally, and constitute the specific feelings whose intensities sum up into the unity of satisfaction. In such occasions the process is deficient in its highest phases; the process is the slave to the datum. There is the individualizing phase of conformal feeling, but the originative phases of supplementary and conceptual feelings are negligible.
( 34 ) Page 117: The direct perception whereby the datum in the immediate subject is inherited from the past can thus, under an abstraction, be conceived as the transference of throbs of emotional energy, clothed in the specific forms provided by sensa. Since the vagueness in the experient subject will veil the separate objectifications wherein there are individual contributions to the total satisfaction, the emotional energy in the final satisfaction wears the aspect of a total intensity capable of all gradations of ideal variation. But in its origin it represents the totality arising from the contributions of separate objects to that form of energy. Thus, having regard to its origin, a real atomic structure of each form of energy is discernible, so much from each objectified actual occasion; and only a finite number of actual occasions will be relevant.
( 35 ) Page 119: In principle, the animal body is only the more highly organized and immediate part of the general environment for its dominant actual occasion, which is the ultimate [183] percipient. But the transition from without to within the body marks the passage from lower to higher grades of actual occasions. The higher the grade, the more vigorous and the more original is the enhancement from the supplementary phase. Pure receptivity and transmission give place to the trigger-action of life whereby there is release of energy in novel forms. Thus the transmitted datum acquires sensa enhanced in relevance or even changed in character by the passage from the low-grade external world into the intimacy of the human body. The datum transmitted from the stone becomes the touch-feeling in the hand, but it preserves the vector character of its origin from the stone. The touch-feeling in the hand with this vector origin from the stone is transmitted to the percipient in the brain. Thus the final perception is the perception of the stone through the touch in the hand. In this perception the stone is vague and faintly relevant in comparison with the hand. But, however dim, it is there.
( 36 ) Page 123: [188] Presentational immediacy illustrates the contemporary world in respect to its potentiality for extensive subdivision into atomic actualities and in respect to the scheme of perspective relationships which thereby eventuates. But it gives no information as to the actual atomization of this contemporary 'real potentiality.' By its limitations it exemplifies the doctrine, already stated above, that the contemporary world happens independently of the actual occasion with which it is contemporary. This is in fact the definition of contemporaneousness (cf. Part II, Ch. II, Sect. I); namely, that actual occasions, A and B, are mutually contemporary, when A does not contribute to the datum for B, and B does not contribute to the datum for A, except that both A and B are atomic regions in the potential scheme of spatio-temporal extensiveness which is a datum for both A and B.
( 37 ) Page 123: Hume's polemic respecting causation is, in fact, one prolonged, convincing argument that pure presentational immediacy does not disclose any causal influence, either whereby one actual entity is constitutive of the percipient actual entity, or whereby one perceived actual entity is constitutive of another perceived actual entity. The conclusion is that, in so far as concerns their disclosure by presentational immediacy, actual entities in the contemporary universe are causally independent of each other. The two pure modes of perception in this way disclose a variety of loci defined by reference to the percipient occasion M. For example, there are the actual occasions of the settled world which provide the datum for M; these lie in M's causal past. Again, there are the potential occasions for which M decides its own potentialities of contribution to their data; these lie in M's causal future. There are also those actual occasions which lie neither in M's causal past, nor in M's causal future. Such actual occasions are called M's 'contemporaries.' These [189] three loci are defined solely by reference to the pure mode of causal efficacy.
( 38 ) Page 124: Hume's polemic respecting causation constitutes a proof that M's 'immediate present' lies within the locus of M's contemporaries. The presentation to M of this locus, forming its immediate present, contributes to M's datum two facts about the universe: one fact is that there is a 'unison of becoming ' constituting a positive relation of all the occasions in this community to any one of them. The members of this community share in a common immediacy; they are in 'unison' as to their becoming: that is to say, any pair of occasions in the locus are contemporaries. The other fact is the subjective illustration of the potential extensive subdivision with complete vagueness respecting the actual atomization. For example, the stone, which in the immediate [190] present is a group of many actual occasions, is illustrated as one grey spatial region. But, to go back to the former fact, the many actual entities of the present stone and the percipient are connected together in the 'unison of immediate becoming.' This community of concrescent occasions, forming M's immediate present, thus establishes a principle of common relatedness, a principle realized as an element in M's datum. This is the principle of mutual relatedness in the 'unison of becoming.' But this mutual relatedness is independent of the illustration by those sensa through which presentational immediacy for M is effected. Also the illustration by these sensa has unequal relevance for M, throughout the locus. In its spatially remote parts it becomes vaguer and vaguer, fainter and fainter; and yet the principle of 'unison of becoming' still holds, in despite of the fading importance of the sensa. We thus find that the locus namely, M's immediate present is determined by the condition of 'mutual unison' independently of variations of relevant importance in M's illustrative sensa, and extends to their utmost bounds of faintness, and is equally determinate beyond such bounds. We thus gain the conception of a locus in which any two atomic actualities are in 'concrescent unison,' and which is particularized by the fact that M belongs to it, and so do all actual occasions belonging to extensive regions which lie in M's immediate present as illustrated by importantly relevant sensa. This complete region is the prolongation of M's immediate present beyond M's direct perception, the prolongation being effected by the principle of 'concrescent unison.'
( 39 ) Page 125: The 'classical' theory of time tacitly assumed that a duration included the directly perceived immediate present of each one of its members. The converse proposition certainly follows from the account given above, that the immediate present of each actual occasion lies in a duration. An actual occasion will be said 6 to be 'cogredient with' or 'stationary in' the duration including its directly perceived immediate present. The actual occasion is included in its own immediate present; so that each actual occasion through its percipience in the pure mode of presentational immediacy-if such percipience has important relevance defines one duration in which it is included. The percipient occasion is 'stationary' in this duration.
( 40 ) Page 125: But the classical theory also assumed the converse of this statement. It assumed that any actual occasion only lies in one duration; so that if N lies in the duration including M's immediate present, then M lies in the duration including N's immediate present. The philosophy of organism, in agreement with recent physics, rejects this conversion; though it holds that such rejection is based on scientific examination of our cosmic epoch, and not on any more general metaphysical principle. According to the philosophy of organism, in the present cosmic epoch only one duration includes all M's immediate present; this one duration will be called M's 'presented duration.' But M itself lies in many durations; each duration including M also includes some portions of M's presented duration. In the case of human perception practically all the important portions are thus included; also in human experience the relationship to such durations is what we express by the notion of 'movement.'
( 41 ) Page 125: To sum up this discussion. In respect to any one actual occasion M there are three distinct nexus of occasions to be considered: (i) The nexus of M's contemporaries, defined by the characteristic that M and any one of its contemporaries happen in causal independence of each other. (ii) Durations including M; any such duration is defined by the characteristic that any two of its members are contemporaries.
( 42 ) Page 129: The microscopic meaning is concerned with the formal constitution of an actual occasion, considered as a process of realizing an individual unity of experience. The macroscopic meaning is concerned with the givenness of the actual world, considered as the stubborn fact which at once limits and provides [197] opportunity for the actual occasion. The canalization of the creative urge; exemplified in its massive reproduction of social nexus, is for common sense the final illustration of the power of stubborn fact. Also in our experience, we essentially arise out of our bodies which are the stubborn facts of the immediate relevant past. We are also carried on by our immediate past of personal experience; we finish a sentence because we have begun it. The sentence may embody a new thought, never phrased before, or an old one rephrased with verbal novelty. There need be no well-worn association between the sounds of the earlier and the later words. But it remains remorselessly true, that we finish a sentence because we have begun it. We are governed by stubborn fact.
( 43 ) Page 141: In the philosophy of organism 'the soul' as it appears in Hume, and 'the mind' as it appears in Locke and Hume, are replaced by the phrases 'the actual entity ' and 'the actual occasion ' these phrases being synonymous.
( 44 ) Page 161:In the philosophy of organism knowledge is relegated to the intermediate phase of process. Cognizance belongs to the genus of subjective forms which are admitted, or [244] not admitted, to the function of absorbing the objective content into the subjectivity of satisfaction. Its 'importance' is therefore no necessary element in the concrete actual entity. In the case of any one such entity, it may merely constitute an instance of what Locke terms 'a capacity.' If we are considering the society of successive actual occasions in the historic route forming the life of an enduring object, some of the earlier actual occasions may be without knowledge, and some of the later may possess knowledge. In such a case, the unknowing man has become knowing. There is nothing surprising in this conclusion; it happens daily for most of us, when we sleep at night and wake in the morning. Every actual entity has the capacity for knowledge, and there is graduation in the intensity of various items of knowledge; but, in general, knowledge seems to be negligible apart from a peculiar complexity in the constitution of some actual occasion.
( 45 ) Page 162: Thus consciousness involves the rise into importance of the contrast between the eternal objects designated by the words 'any' and 'just that.' conscious perception is, therefore, the most primitive form of judgment. The organic philosophy holds that consciousness only arises in a late derivative phase of complex integrations. If an actual occasion be such that phases of this sort are negligible in its concrescence, then in its experience there is no knowledge; owing to the fact that consciousness is a subjective form belonging to the later phases, the prehensions which it directly irradiates are those of an 'impure' type. Consciousness only illuminates the more primitive types of prehension so far as these prehensions are still elements in the products of integration. Thus those elements of our experience which stand out clearly and distinctly in our consciousness are not its basic facts; they are the derivative modifications which arise in the process. For [246] example, consciousness only dimly illuminates the prehensions in the mode of causal efficacy, because these prehensions are primitive elements in our experience. But prehensions in the mode of presentational immediacy are among those prehensions which we enjoy with the most vivid consciousness. These prehensions are late derivatives in the concrescence of an experient subject. The consequences of the neglect of this law, that the late derivative elements are more clearly illuminated by consciousness than the primitive elements, have been fatal to the proper analysis of an experient occasion. In fact, most of the difficulties of philosophy are produced by it. Experience has been explained in a thoroughly topsy-turvy fashion, the wrong end first. In particular, emotional and purposeful experience have been made to follow upon Hume's impressions of sensation.
( 46 ) Page 166:The reformed subjectivist principle adopted by the philosophy of organism is merely an alternative statement of the principle of relativity (the fourth Category of Explanation). This principle states that it belongs to the nature of a 'being' that it is a potential for every 'becoming.' Thus all things are to be conceived as qualifications of actual occasions. According to the ninth Category of Explanation, how an actual entity becomes constitutes what that actual entity is. This principle states that the being of a res vera is constituted by its 'becoming.' The way in which one actual entity is qualified by other actual entities is the 'experience' of the actual world enjoyed by that actual entity, as subject. The subjectivist principle is that the whole universe consists of elements disclosed in the analysis of the experiences of subjects. Process is the becoming of experience. [253] It follows that the philosophy of organism entirely accepts the subjectivist bias of modern philosophy. It also accepts Hume's doctrine that nothing is to be received into the philosophical scheme which is not discoverable as an element in subjective experience. This is the ontological principle. Thus Hume's demand that causation be describable as an element in experience is, on these principles, entirely justifiable. The point of the criticisms of Hume's procedure is that we have direct intuition of inheritance and memory: thus the only problem is, so to describe the general character of experience that these intuitions may be included. It is here that Hume fails. Also those modern empiricists who substitute 'law' for 'causation' fail even worse than Hume. For 'law' no more satisfies Hume's tests than does 'causation.' There is no 'impression' of law, or of lawfulness. Even allowing memory, according to Humian principles what has happened in experience has happened in experience, and that is all that can be said. Everything else is bluff, combined with the fraudulent insertion of 'probability' into a conclusion which demands 'blank ignorance.'
( 47 ) Page 169:The first principle, explanatory of symbolic reference, is that for such reference a 'common ground' is required. By this necessity for a 'common ground' it is meant that there must be components in experience which are directly recognized as identical in each of the pure perceptive modes. In the transition to a higher phase of experience, there is a concrescence in which prehensions in the two modes are brought into a unity of feeling: this concrescent unity arises from a congruity of their subjective forms in virtue of the identity relation between the two prehensions, owing to some components in common. Thus the symbolic reference belongs to one of the later originative phases of experience. These later phases are distinguished by their new element of originative freedom. Accordingly, while the two pure perceptive modes are incapable of error, symbolic reference introduces this possibility. When human experience is in question 'perception' almost always means 'perception in the mixed mode of symbolic reference.' Thus, in general, human perception is subject to error, because, in respect to those components most clearly in consciousness, it is interpretative. In fact, error is the mark of the higher organisms, and is the schoolmaster by whose agency there is upward evolution. For example, the evolutionary use of intelligence is that it enables the individual to profit by error without being slaughtered by it. But at present, we are not considering conceptual or intellectual f functioning. One main element of common ground, shared between the two pure modes, is the presented locus. This locus enters subordinately into the perceptive mode of causal efficacy, vaguely exemplifying its participation in the general scheme of extensive interconnection, involved in the real potentiality. It is not disclosed by that perceptive mode in any other way; at least it is not directly disclosed. The further disclosure must be indirect, since contemporary events are exactly those which are neither causing, nor caused by, the percipient actual occasion. Now, although the various causal pasts (i.e. 'actual worlds') of the contemporary actual occasions are not wholly identical with the causal past of the percipient actual occasion, yet, so far as important relevance is concerned, these causal pasts are practically identical. Thus there is, in the mode of causal efficacy, a direct perception of those antecedent actual occasions which are causally efficacious both for the percipient and for the relevant events in the presented locus. The percipient therefore, under the limitation of its own perspective, prehends the causal influences to which the presented locus in its important regions is subjected. This amounts to an indirect perception of this locus, a perception in which the direct components belong to the pure mode of causal efficacy. If we now turn to the perceptive mode of presentational immediacy, the regions, perceived by direct and indirect knowledge respectively, are inverted in comparison with the other mode. The presented locus is directly illustrated by the sensa; while the causal past, the causal future, and the other contemporary events, are only indirectly perceived by means of their extensive relations to the presented locus. It must be remembered that the presented locus has its fourth dimension of temporal thickness 'spatialized' as the specious present of the percipient. Thus the presented locus, with the animal body of the percipient as the region from which perspectives are focused, is the regional origin by reference to which in this perceptive mode the complete scheme of extensive regions is rendered determinate. The respective roles of the two perceptive modes in experience are aptly exemplified by the fact that all scientific observations, such as measurements, determinations of relative spatial position, determinations of sense-data such as colours, sounds, tastes, smells, temperature feelings, touch feelings, etc., are made in the perceptive mode of presentational immediacy; and that great care is exerted to keep this mode pure, that is to say, devoid of symbolic reference to causal efficacy. In this way accuracy is secured, in the sense that the direct observation is purged of all interpretation. On the other hand all scientific theory is stated in terms referring exclusively to the scheme of relatedness, which, so far as it is observed, involves the percepta in the pure mode of causal efficacy. It thus stands out at once, that what we want to know about, from the point of view either of curiosity or of technology, chiefly resides in those aspects of the world disclosed in causal efficacy: but that what we can distinctly register is chiefly to be found among the percepta in the mode of presentational immediacy.
( 48 ) Page 171:We can now complete our account of presentational immediacy. In this perceptive mode the sensa are 'given' for the percipient, but this donation is not to be ascribed to the spatial object which is thereby presented, the stone, for example. Now it is a primary doctrine that what is 'given' is given by reason of objectifications of actual entities from the settled past. We therefore seek for the actual occasions to whose objectifications this donation is to be ascribed. In this procedure we are only agreeing with the spirit of Descartes' fifty-second principle (part I):"For this reason, when we perceive any attribute, we therefore conclude that some existing thing or substance to which it may be attributed, is necessarily present." common sense, physical theory, and physiological theory, combine to point out a historic route of inheritance, from actual occasion to succeeding actual occasion, first physically in the external environment, then physiologically through the eyes in the case of visual data up the nerves, into the brain. The donation taking sight as an example is not confined to definite sensa, such as shades of colour: it also includes geometrical relationships to the general environment. In this chain of inheritances, the eye is picked out to rise into perceptive prominence, because another historic route of physiological inheritance starts from it, whereby a later occasion (almost identical with the earlier) is illustrated by the sensum 'eye-strain' in the mode of presentational immediacy; but this eye-strain is another allied story. In the visual datum for the percipient there are first these components of colour-sensa combined with geometrical relationships to the external world of the settled past: secondly, there are also in the datum the general geometrical relationships forming the completion of this potential scheme into the contemporary world, and into [26l] the future.
( 49 ) Page 174:But this physiological explanation is couched wholly in terms of causal efficacy: it is the conjectural record of the travel of a spasm of excitement along nerves to some nodal centre, and of the return spasm of contraction back to the eyelids. The correct technical phraseology would not alter the fact that the explanation does not involve any appeal to presentational immediacy either for actual occasions resident in the nerves, or for the man. At the most there is a tacit supposition as to what a physiologist, who in fact was not there, might have seen if he had been there, and if he could have vivisected the man without affecting these occurrences, and if he could have observed with a microscope which also in fact was absent.
( 50 ) Page 177:[269] when we pass to inorganic actual occasions, we have lost the two higher originative phases in the 'process,' namely, the 'supplemental' phase, and the 'mental' phase. They are lost in the sense that, so far as our observations go, they are negligible. The influx of objectifications of the actualities of the world as organized vehicles of feeling is responded to by a mere subjective appropriation of such elements of feeling in their received relevance. The inorganic occasions are merely what the causal past allows them to be.
( 51 ) Page 177:In the actual world we discern four grades of actual occasions, grades which are not to be sharply distinguished from each other. First, and lowest, there are the actual occasions in so-called 'empty space'; secondly, there are the actual occasions which are moments in the life-histories of enduring non-living objects, such as electrons or other primitive organisms; thirdly, there are the actual occasions which are moments in the life-histories of enduring living objects; fourthly, there are the actual occasions which are moments in the life-histories of enduring objects with conscious knowledge.
( 52 ) Page 177:We may imaginatively conjecture that the first grade is to be identified with actual occasions for which 'presented durations' are negligible elements among their data, negligible by reason of negligible presentational immediacy. Thus no intelligible definition of rest and motion is possible for historic routes including them, because they correspond to no inherent spatialization of the actual world.
( 53 ) Page 177:The second grade is to be identified with actual occasions for which 'presented durations' are important elements in their data, but with a limitation only to be [270] observed in the lower moments of human experience. In such occasions the data of felt sensa, derived from the more primitive data of causal efficacy, are projected onto the contemporary 'presented locus' without any clear illustration of special regions in that locus. The past has been lifted into the present, but the vague differentiations in the past have not been transformed into any precise differentiations within the present. The enhancement of precision has not arrived.
( 54 ) Page 178:By diversion of attention we can inhibit its entry into consciousness; but, whether mentally analysed or no, it remains the given uncontrolled basis upon which our character weaves itself. Our bodies are largely contrivances whereby some central actual occasion may inherit these basic experiences of its antecedent parts. Thus organic bodies have their parts coordinated by a peculiar vividness in their mutual inheritance. In a sense, the difference between a living organism and the inorganic environment is only a question of degree; but it is a difference of degree which makes all the difference in effect, it is a difference of quality.
( 55 ) Page 183:But we do not usually think of the things as symbolizing the words correlated to them. This failure to invert our ideas arises from the most useful aspect of symbolism. In general the symbols are more handy elements in our experience than are the meanings. We can say the word 'forest' whenever we like; but only under certain conditions can we directly experience an existent forest. To procure such an experience usually involves a problem of transportation only possible on our holidays. Also it is not so easy even to remember forest scenes with any vividness; and we usually find that the immediate experience of the word 'forest' helps to elicit such recollections. In such ways language is handy as an instrument of communication along the successive occasions of the historic route forming the life of one individual. By an [278] extension of these same principles of behaviour, it communicates from the occasions of one individual to the succeeding occasions of another individual. The same means which are handy for procuring the immediate presentation of a word to oneself are equally effective for presenting it to another person. Thus we may have a two-way system of symbolic reference involving two persons, A and B. The forest, recollected by A, symbolizes the word 'forest' for A; then A, for his own sake and for B's sake, pronounces the word 'forest'; then by the efficacy of the environment and of B's bodily parts, and by the supplemental enhancement due to B's experiential process, the word 'forest' is perceived by B in the mode of immediacy; and, finally by symbolic reference, B recollects vaguely various forest scenes. In this use of language for communication between two persons, there is in principle nothing which differs from its use by one person for communication along the route of his own actual occasions.
( 56 ) Page 185: Again, consider strong religious emotion consider a Christian meditating on the sayings in the Gospels. He is not judging 'true or false'; he is eliciting their value as elements in feeling. In fact, he may ground his judgment of truth upon his realization of value. But such a procedure is impossible, if the primary function of propositions is to be elements in judgments. The 'lure for feeling' is the final cause guiding the concrescence of feelings. By this concrescence the multifold datum of the primary phase is gathered into the unity of the final satisfaction of feeling. The 'objective lure' is that discrimination among eternal objects introduced into the universe by the real internal constitutions of the actual occasions forming the datum of the concrescence under review. This discrimination also involves eternal objects excluded from value in the temporal occasions of that datum, in addition to involving the eternal objects included for such occasions.
( 57 ) Page 186: In a proposition the various logical subjects involved are impartially concerned. The proposition is no more about one logical subject than another logical subject. But according to the ontological principle, every proposition must be somewhere. The 'locus' of a proposition consists of those actual occasions whose actual worlds include the logical subjects of the proposition. When an actual entity belongs to the locus of a proposition, then conversely the proposition is an element in the lure for feeling of that actual entity. If by the decision of the concrescence, the proposition has been admitted into feeling, then the proposition constitutes what the feeling has felt. The proposition constitutes a lure for a member of its locus by reason of the germaneness of the complex predicate to the logical subjects, having regard to forms of definiteness in the actual world of that member, and to its antecedent phases of feeling.
( 58 ) Page 189: It is this realized extension of eternal relatedness beyond the mutual relatedness of the actual occasions which prehends into each occasion the full sweep of eternal relatedness. I term this abrupt realization the 'graded envisagement' which each occasion prehends into its synthesis. This graded envisagement is how the actual includes what (in one sense) is 'not-being' as a positive factor in its own achievement. It is the source of error, of truth, of art, of ethics, and of religion. By it, fact is confronted with alternatives. [288]
( 59 ) Page 190:[290] The philosophy of organism admits the subjectivist doctrine (as here stated), but rejects the sensationalist doctrine: hence its doctrine of the objectification of one actual occasion in the experience of another actual occasion. Each actual entity is a throb of experience including the actual world within its scope. The problems of efficient causation and of knowledge receive a common explanation by reference to the texture of actual occasions. The theory of judgment in the philosophy of organism can equally well be described as a 'correspondence' theory or as a 'coherence' theory. It is a correspondence theory, because it describes judgment as the subjective form of the integral prehension of the conformity, or of the non-conformity, of a proposition and an objectified nexus. The prehension in question arises from the synthesis of two prehensions, one physical and the other mental.
( 60 ) Page 191: The physical prehension is the prehension of the nexus of objectified actual occasions. The mental prehension is the prehension of the proposition. This latter prehension is necessarily 'impure,' and it arises from a history of antecedent synthesis whereby a pure conceptual prehension transfers its datum as a predicate of hypothetical relatedness for the actualities in the datum of some physical prehension (cf. Part III). But the origination of a propositional prehension does not concern us in this description of judgment. The sole point is the synthesis of a physical prehension and propositional prehension into an 'intellectual' prehension (cf. Part III) whose subjective form involves judgment.
( 61 ) Page 192:In a derivative judgment the integration of the physical datum with the proposition elicits into feeling the full complex detail of the proposition, but does not elicit into feeling the full comparison of this detail with the complex detail of the physical fact. There is some comparison involving the remainder of the detail. But the subjective form embraces the totality of the proposition, instead of assuming a complex pattern which discriminates between the compared and the uncompared components. In derivative judgments there can be error. Logic is the analysis of the relationships between propositions in virtue of which derivative judgments will not introduce errors, other than those already attaching to the judgments in the premises. Most judgments are derivative; such judgments illustrate the doctrine that the subjective form of a feeling is affected by the totality of the actual occasion. This has been termed the 'sensitivity' of feelings in one occasion. In an intuitive judgment the subjective form of assent or dissent has been restrained, so as to derive its character solely from the contrasts in the datum. Even in this case, the emotional force of the judgment, as it passes into purpose, is derived from the whole judging subject.
( 62 ) Page 194:A relation is called a 'dual relation' when the nexus in which it is realized consists of two, and only two, actual occasions. It is a 'triple relation' when there are three occasions, and so on.
( 63 ) Page 196:This discussion can be illustrated by the proposition, 'Caesar has crossed the Rubicon.' This form of words symbolizes an indefinite number of diverse propositions. In its least abstract form 'Caesar' stands for a society of settled actual entities in the actual world from the standpoint of the judging subject, with their objectifications consciously perceived by the subject. The whole theory of perception will come up for further discussion in a later chapter (cf. Part III ) ; at this point it can be assumed. The word 'Rubicon' is to be explained in the same way as the word 'Caesar.' The only points left ambiguous respecting 'Caesar' and 'Rubicon' are that these societies either or both, and each with its defining characteristic-may be conjecturally supposed to be prolonged up to the world contemporary with the judging subject, or, even more conjecturally, into the future [298] world beyond the subject. The past tense of the word 'has' shows that this point of ambiguity is irrelevant, so that the proposition can be framed so as to ignore it. But it need not be so framed: one of Caesar's old soldiers may in later years have sat on the bank of the river and meditated on the assassination of Caesar, and on Caesar's passage over the little river tranquilly flowing before his gaze. This would have been a different proposition from the more direct one which I am now considering. Nothing could better illustrate the hopeless ambiguity of language; since both propositions fit the same verbal phraseology. There is yet a third proposition: a modern traveler sitting on the bank of the Rubicon, and meditating on his direct perceptions of actual occasions can locate, relatively to himself by spatio-temporal specifications, an event which inferentially and conjecturally he believes to include a portion of the past history of the Rubicon as directly known to him. He also, by an analogous process of inference and conjecture, and of spatio-temporal specification, .locates relatively to himself another event which he believes to contain the life of Caesar of whom he has no direct knowledge. The proposition meditated on by this traveler sitting on the bank of the modern river is evidently a different proposition to that in the mind of Caesar's old soldier. Then there is the proposition which might have been in the mind of one of the crowd who listened to Antony's speech, a man who had seen Caesar and not the Rubicon.
( 64 ) Page 197:Thus a proposition is an example of what Locke calls an 'idea determined to particular existences.' It is the potentiality of such an idea; the realized idea, admitted to decision in a given subject, is the judgment, which may be a true or false idea about the particular things. The discussion of this question must be resumed (cf. Part III) when conceptual activity is examined. But it is evident that a proposition is a complex entity which [300] stands between the eternal objects and the actual occasions. Compared to eternal objects a proposition shares in the concrete particularity of actual occasions; and compared to actual occasions a proposition shares in the abstract generality of eternal objects. Finally, it must be remembered that propositions enter into experience in other ways than through judgment-feelings.
( 65 ) Page 197:A metaphysical proposition-- in the proper, general sense of the term 'metaphysical' --signifies a proposition which (i) has meaning for any actual occasion, as a subject entertaining it, and (ii) is 'general,' in the sense that its predicate potentially relates any and every set of actual occasions, providing the suitable number of logical subjects for the predicative pattern, and (iii) has a 'uniform' truth-value, in the sense that, by reason of its form and scope, its truth-value is identical with the truth-value of each of the singular propositions to be obtained by restricting the application of the predicate to any one set of logical subjects. It is obvious that, if a metaphysical proposition be true, the third condition is unnecessary. For a general proposition can only be true if this condition be fulfilled. But if the general proposition be false, then it is only metaphysical when in addition each of the derivate singular propositions is false. The general proposition would be false, if any one of the derivate singular propositions were false. But the third condition is expressed in the proposition without any dependence upon the determination of the proposition's truth or falsehood.
( 66 ) Page 198:Certainly, this proposition, construed in the sense 'one entity and another entity make two entities,' seems to be properly metaphysical without any shadow of limitation upon its generality, or truth. But we must hesitate even here, when we notice that it is usually asserted, with equal confidence as to the generality of its metaphysical truth, in a sense which is certainly limited, and sometimes untrue. In our reference to the actual world, we rarely consider an individual actual entity. The objects of our thoughts are almost always societies, or looser groups of actual entities. Now, for the sake of simplicity, consider a society of the 'personal' type. Such a society will be a linear succession of actual occasions forming a historical route in which some defining characteristic is inherited by each occasion from its predecessors. A society of this sort is an 'enduring object.' probably, a simple enduring object is simpler than anything which we ordinarily perceive or think about. It is the simplest type of society; and for any duration of its existence it requires that its environment be largely composed of analogous simple enduring objects. What we normally consider is the wider society in which many strands of enduring objects are to be found, a 'corpuscular society.'
( 67 ) Page 198:Now consider two distinct enduring objects. They will be easier to think about if their defining characteristics are different. We will call these defining characteristics a and b, and also will use these letters, a and b, as the names of the two enduring objects. Now the proposition 'one entity and another entity make two [302] entities' is usually construed in the sense that, given two enduring objects, any act of attention which consciously comprehends an actual occasion from each of the two historic routes will necessarily discover two actual occasions, one from each of the two distinct routes. For example, suppose that a cup and a saucer are two such enduring objects, which of course they are not; we always assume that, so long as they are both in existence and are sufficiently close to be seen in one glance, any act of attention, whereby we perceive the cup and perceive the saucer, will thereby involve the perception of two actual entities, one the cup in one occasion of its existence and the other the saucer in one occasion of its existence. There can be no reasonable doubt as to the truth of this assumption in this particular example. But in making it, we are very far from the metaphysical proposition from which we started. We are in fact stating a truth concerning the wide societies of entities amid which our lives are placed. It is a truth concerning this cosmos, but not a metaphysical truth.
( 68 ) Page 199:Also let us assume that their defining characteristics, a and b, are not contraries, so that both of them can qualify the same actual occasion. Then there is no general metaphysical reason why the distinct routes of a and b should not intersect in at least one actual occasion. Indeed, having regard to the extreme generality of the notion of a simple enduring object, it is practically certain that with the proper choice for the defining characteristics, a and b intersecting historic routes for a and b must have frequently come into existence. In such a contingency a being who could consciously distinguish the two distinct enduring objects a and b, so as to have knowledge of their distinct defining characteristics and their distinct historic routes, might find a and b exemplified in one actual entity. It is as though the cup and the saucer were at one instant identical; and then, later on, resumed their distinct existence.
( 69 ) Page 199:[303] we hardly ever apply arithmetic in its pure metaphysical sense, without the addition of presumptions which depend for their truth on the character of the societies dominating the cosmic epoch in which we live. It is hardly necessary to draw attention to the fact, that ordinary verbal statements make no pretense of discriminating the different senses in which an arithmetical statement can be understood. There is no difficulty in imagining a world i.e., a cosmic epoch in which arithmetic would be an interesting fanciful topic for dreamers, but useless for practical people engrossed in the business of life. In fact, we seem to have been only barely rescued from such a state of things. For amid the actual occasions located in the wilds of so-called 'empty space,' and well removed from the enduring objects which go to form the enduring material bodies, it is quite probable that the contemplation of arithmetic would not direct attention to any very important relations of things. It is, of course, a mere speculation that any actual entity, occurring in such an environment of faintly coordinated achievement, achieves the intricacy of constitution required for conscious mental operations.
( 70 ) Page 200: This astronomical contingency, and the beliefs which cluster round it, have been stated with some detail, because-as thus expressed-they illustrate the problem as it shapes itself in philosophy. Also the example of the railway time-tables illustrates another point. For it is possible momentarily, in Vermont on July l, 1927, to forget that the unprecedented Mississippi floods happened during that May and June; so that although the estimate as to error in punctuality was justified by the evidence consciously before us, it did not in fact allow for the considerable derangement of the traffic in some states in the Union. The point of this illustration from railway trains is that there is a conformity to matter of fact which these judgments exhibit, even if the events concerned have not happened. Or will not happen. These considerations introduce the fundamental principle concerning 'judgment.' It is that all judgment is categorical; it concerns a proposition true or false in its application to the actual occasion which is the subject making the judgment. This doctrine is not so far from Bradley's doctrine of judgment, as explained in his Logic. According to Bradley, the ultimate subject of every judgment is the one ultimate substance, the absolute. Also, according to him, the judging subject is a mode of the absolute self-contradictory if taken to be independently actual. For Bradley, the judging subject has only a [305] derivative actuality, which is the expression of its status as an affection of the absolute. Thus, in Bradley's doctrine, a judgment is an operation by which the absolute, under the limitations of one of its affections, enjoys self-consciousness of its enjoyment of affections. It will be noticed that in this bald summary of Bradley's position, I am borrowing Spinoza's phrase, 'affectiones substantiae.'
( 71 ) Page 200: In the philosophy of organism, an actual occasion as has been stated above is the whole universe in process of attainment of a particular satisfaction. Bradley's doctrine of actuality is simply inverted. The final actuality is the particular process with its particular attainment of satisfaction. The actuality of the universe is merely derivative from its solidarity in each actual entity. It must be held that judgment concerns the universe as objectified from the standpoint of the judging subject. It concerns the universe through that subject.
( 72 ) Page 204:It is evident that, in this discussion of induction, the philosophy of organism [311] appears as an enlargement of the premise in ethical discussions: that man is a social animal. Analogously, every actual occasion is social, so that when we have presumed the existence of any persistent type of actual occasions, we have thereby made presumptions as to types of societies comprised in its environment. Another way of stating this explanation of the validity of induction is, that in every forecast there is a presupposition of a certain type of actual entities, and that the question then asked is, Under what circumstances will these entities find themselves? The reason that an answer can be given is that the presupposed type of entities requires a presupposed type of data for the primary phases of these actual entities; and that a presupposed type of data requires a presupposed type of social environment. But the laws of nature are the outcome of the social environment. Hence when we have presupposed a type of actual occasions, we have already some information as to the laws of nature in operation throughout the environment.
( 73 ) Page 205: In the preceding section there has been a covert appeal to probability. It is the purpose of this section to explain how the probability, thus invoked, can be explained according to the statistical theory. First, we have to note exactly where this appeal to probability enters into the notion of induction. An inductive argument always includes a hypothesis, namely, that the environment which is the subject-matter considered contains a society of actual occasions analogous to a society in the present. But analogous societies require analogous data for their several occasions; and analogous data can be provided only by the objectifications provided by analogous environments. But the laws of nature are derived from the characters of the societies dominating the environment. Thus the laws of nature dominating the environment in question have some analogy to the laws of nature dominating the immediate environment.
( 74 ) Page 205: Now it is evident that the theory of cosmic epochs, due to the dominance of societies of actual occasions, provides the basis for a statistical dominant societies in certain ordered interconnections. There is also an admixture of chaotic occasions which cannot be classified as belonging to any society. But. having regard to the enormous extension of any cosmic epoch, we are practically dealing with infinities, so that some method of sampling is required. rooted in the nature of the case and not arbitrarily adopted.
( 75 ) Page 206: This natural method of sampling is provided by the data which form the primary phase of any one actual occasion. Each actual occasion objectifies the other actual occasions in its environment. This environment can be limited to the relevant portion of the cosmic epoch. It is a finite region of the extensive continuum, so far as adequate importance is concerned in respect to individual differences among actual occasions. Also, in respect to the importance of individual differences, we may assume that there is a lower limit to the extension of each relevant occasion within this region. With these two presumptions, it follows that the relevant objectifications, forming the relevant data for any one occasion, refer to a finite sample of actual occasions in the environment. Accordingly our knowledge of the external world, and of the conditions upon which its laws depend, is, through and through, of that numerical character which a statistical theory of probability requires. Such a theory does not require that exact statistical calculations be made. All that is meant by such a theory is that our probability judgments are ultimately derivable from vague estimates of 'more or less' in a numerical sense. [314] we have an unprecise intuition of the statistical basis of the sort of way in which things happen.
( 76 ) Page 206: The main line of thought has been (i) that each actual occasion has at the base of its own constitution the environment from which it springs; (ii) that in this function of the environment abstraction has been made from its indefinite multiplicity of forms of definiteness, so as to obtain a concordant experience of the elements retained; (iii) that any actual occasion belonging to an assigned species requires an environment adapted to that species, so that the presupposition of a species involves a presupposition concerning the environment; (iv) that in every inductive judgment, and in every judgment of probability, there is a presupposition, implicit or explicit, of one, or more, species of actual occasions implicated in the situation considered, so that, by (iii), there is a presupposition of some general type of environment.
( 77 ) Page 210: The discussion of how the actual particular occasions become original elements for a new creation is termed [32l] the theory of objectification. The objectified particular occasions together have the unity of a datum for the creative concrescence. But in acquiring this measure of connection, their inherent presuppositions of each other eliminate certain elements in their constitutions, and elicit into relevance other elements. Thus objectification is an operation of mutually adjusted abstraction, or elimination, whereby the many occasions of the actual world become one complex datum. This fact of the elimination by reason of synthesis is sometimes termed the perspective of the actual world from the standpoint of that concrescence. Each actual occasion defines its own actual world from which it originates. No two occasions can have identical actual worlds.
( 78 ) Page 211: An instance of concrescence is termed an 'actual entity'-or, equivalently, an 'actual occasion.' There is not one completed set of things which are actual occasions. For the fundamental inescapable fact is the creativity [322] in virtue of which there can be no 'many things' which are not subordinated in a concrete unity. Thus a set of all actual occasions is by the nature of things a standpoint for another concrescence which elicits a concrete unity from those many actual occasions. Thus we can never survey the actual world except from the standpoint of an immediate concrescence which is falsifying the presupposed completion. The creativity in virtue of which any relative complete actual world is, by the nature of things, the datum for a new concrescence is termed 'transition.' Thus, by reason of transition 'the actual world' is always a relative term, and refers to that basis of presupposed actual occasions which is a datum for the novel concrescence.
( 79 ) Page 211: An actual occasion is analysable. The analysis discloses operations transforming entities which are individually alien into components of a complex which is concretely one. The term 'feeling' will be used as the generic description of such operations. We thus say that an actual occasion is a concrescence effected by a process of feelings.
( 80 ) Page 211: A feeling can be considered in respect to (i) the actual occasions felt, (ii) the eternal objects felt, (iii) the feelings felt, and (iv) its own subjective forms of intensity. In the process of concrescence the diverse feelings pass on to wider generalities of integral feeling.
( 81 ) Page 212: An actual occasion is nothing but the unity to be ascribed to a particular instance of concrescence. This concrescence is thus nothing else than the 'real internal constitution' of the actual occasion in question. The analysis of the formal constitution of an actual entity has given three stages in the process of feeling: (i) the responsive phase, (ii) the supplemental stage, and (iii) the satisfaction.
( 82 ) Page 213: In the aesthetic supplement there is an emotional appreciation of the contrasts and rhythms inherent in the unification of the objective content in the concrescence of one actual occasion. In this phase perception is heightened by its assumption of pain and pleasure, beauty and distaste. It is the phase of inhibitions and intensifications. It is the phase in which blue becomes more intense by reason of its contrasts, and shape acquires dominance by reason of its loveliness. What was received as alien, has been recreated as private. This is the phase of perceptivity, including emotional reactions to perceptivity. In this phase, private immediacy has welded the data into a new fact of blind feeling. Pure aesthetic supplement has solved its problem.
( 83 ) Page 214: But 'blindness' of the process, so far, retains an indetermination. There must be either a determinate negation of intellectual 'sight,' or an admittance of intellectual 'sight.' The negation of intellectual sight is the dismissal into irrelevance of eternal objects in their abstract status of pure potentials. 'what might be' has the capability of relevant contrast with 'what is.' If the pure potentials, in this abstract capacity, are dismissed from relevance, the second sub-phase is trivial. The process then constitutes a blind actual occasion, 'blind' in the sense that no intellectual operations are involved; though conceptual operations are always involved. Thus there is always mentality in the form of 'vision,' but not always mentality in the form of conscious 'intellectuality.'
( 84 ) Page 214: But if some eternal objects, in their abstract capacity, are realized as relevant to actual fact, there is an actual occasion with intellectual operations. The complex of such intellectual operations is sometimes termed the 'mind' of the actual occasion; and the actual occasion is also termed 'conscious.' But the term 'mind' conveys the suggestion of independent substance. This is not meant here: a better term is the 'consciousness' belonging to the actual occasion. An eternal object realized in respect to its pure potentiality as related to determinate logical subjects is termed a 'propositional feeling' in the mentality of the actual occasion in question. The consciousness belonging to an actual occasion is its sub-phase of intellectual supplementation, when that sub-phase is not purely trivial. This sub-phase is the eliciting, into feeling, of the full contrast between mere propositional potentiality and realized fact.
( 85 ) Page 215: Thus each actual entity, although complete so far as concerns its microscopic process, is yet incomplete by reason of its objective inclusion of the macroscopic [328] process. It really experiences a future which must be actual, although the completed actualities of that future are undetermined. In this sense, each actual occasion experiences its own objective immortality.
( 86 ) Page 286:As an example of (ii), suppose that p is a coordinate division of an actual occasion A. Then p can be conceived as an actual occasion with its own actual world forming its initial datum in its first phase of genetic origination. In fact, P is the hypothetical satisfaction of a hypothetical process of concrescence with this standpoint. The other coordinate divisions of A are either in the 'actual world' for p, or are contemporary with p, or are coordinate divisions of P, or have a complex relation to P expressed by the property that each one of them is coordinately divisible into prehensions Ql Q2 ..., such that each of them has one or other of the three above-mentioned relations to P.
( 87 ) Page 287:An actual entity, in its character of being a physical occasion, is an act of blind perceptivity of the other physical occasions of the actual world. When we consider such an occasion morphologically, as a given entity, its perceptive bonds are divisible by reason of the extensive divisibility of its own standpoints, and by reason of the extensive divisibility of the other actual occasions. Thus we reach perceptive bonds involving one sub-region of the basic region of the perceiver, and one subdivision of the basic region of the perceived.
( 88 ) Page 288:These extensive relations do not make determinate what is transmitted; but they do determine conditions to which all transmission must conform. They represent the systematic scheme which is involved in the real potentiality from which every actual occasion arises." This scheme is also involved in the attained fact which every actual occasion is. The 'extensive' scheme is nothing else than the generic morphology of the internal relations which bind the actual occasions into a nexus, and which bind the prehensions of any one actual occasion into a unity, coordinately divisible.
( 89 ) Page 288:But, for our epoch, extensive connection with its various characteristics is the fundamental organic relationship whereby the physical world is properly described as a community. There are no important physical relationships outside the extensive scheme. To be an actual occasion in the physical world means that the entity in question is a relatum in this scheme of extensive connection. In this epoch, the scheme defines what is physically actual.
( 90 ) Page 289:In this general description of the states of extension, nothing has been said about physical time or physical space, or of the more general notion of creative advance. These are notions which presuppose the more general relationship of extension. They express additional facts about the actual occasions. The extensiveness of space is really the spatialization of extension; and the extensiveness of time is really the temporalization of extension. Physical time expresses the reflection of genetic divisibility into coordinate divisibility.
( 91 ) Page 292:The substance of this chapter can be recapitulated in a summary: Genetic division is concerned with an actual occasion in its character of a concrescent immediacy. Coordinate division is concerned with an actual occasion in its character of a concrete object. Thus for genetic division the primary fact about an occasion is its initial 'dative' phase; for coordinate division the primary fact is the final 'satisfaction.' But with the attainment of the 'satisfaction,' the immediacy of final causation is lost, and the occasion passes into its objective immortality, in virtue of which efficient causation is constituted. Thus in coordinate division we are analysing the complexity of the occasion in its function of an efficient cause. It is in this connection that the morphological scheme of extensiveness attains its importance. In this way we obtain an analysis of the dative phase in terms of the 'satisfactions' of the past world. These satisfactions are systematically disposed in their relative status, according as one is, or is not, in the actual world of another. Also they are divisible into prehensions which can be treated as quasi-actualities with the same morphological system of relative status. This morphological system gains special order from the defining characteristic of the present cosmic epoch. The extensive continuum is this specialized ordering of the concrete occasions and of the prehensions into which they are divisible.
( 92 ) Page 307:The second question for discussion concerns the physical importance of 'external connection.' so long as the atomic character of actual entities is unrecognized, the application of Zeno's method of argument makes it difficult to understand the notion of continuous transmission which reigns in physical science. But the concept of 'actual occasions ' adopted in the philosophy of organism, allows of the following explanation of physical transmission.
( 93 ) Page 307:Let two actual occasions be termed 'contiguous' when the regions constituting their 'standpoints' are externally connected. Then by reason of the absence of intermediate actual occasions, the objectification of the antecedent occasion in the later occasion is peculiarly complete. There will be a set of antecedent, contiguous occasions objectified in any given occasion; and the abstraction which attends every objectification will merely be due to the necessary harmonizations of these objectifications. The objectifications of the more distant past will be termed 'mediate'; the contiguous occasions will have 'immediate' objectification. The mediate objectifications will be transmitted through various routes of successive immediate objectifications. Thus the notion of continuous transmission in science must be replaced by the notion of immediate transmission through a route of successive quanta of extensiveness. These quanta of extensiveness are the basic regions of successive contiguous occasions. It is not necessary for the philosophy of organism entirely to deny that there [469] is direct objectification of one occasion in a later occasion which is not contiguous to it. Indeed, the contrary opinion would seem the more natural for this doctrine. Provided that physical science maintains its denial of 'action at a distance,' the safer guess is that direct objectification is practically negligible except for contiguous occasions; but that this practical negligibility is a characteristic of the present cosmic epoch, without any metaphysical generality. Also a further distinction should be introduced. Physical prehensions fall into two species, pure physical prehensions and hybrid physical prehensions. A pure physical prehension is a prehension whose datum is an antecedent occasion objectified in respect to one of its own physical prehensions. A hybrid prehension has as its datum an antecedent occasion objectified in respect to a conceptual prehension. Thus a pure physical prehension is the transmission of physical feeling, while hybrid prehension is the transmission of mental feeling.
( 94 ) Page 309:The Cartesian subjectivism in its application to physical science became Newton's assumption of individually existent physical bodies, with merely external relationships. We diverge from Descartes by holding that what he has described as primary attributes of physical bodies are really the forms of internal relationships between actual occasions, and within actual occasions. Such a change of thought is the shift from materialism to organism, as the basic idea of physical science.
( 95 ) Page 312:This complex eternal object is analysable into a sense-datum and a geometrical pattern. In physics, the geometrical pattern appears as a state of strain of that actual occasion in the body which is the subject of the [476] feeling. But this feeling of bodily efficacy in the final percipient is the reenaction of an antecedent feeling by an antecedent actual entity in the body. Thus in this antecedent entity there is a feeling concerned with the same sense-datum and a highly analogous state of strain. The feeling must be a 'strain' in the sense defined in the previous section. Now this strain involves a geometricized region, which in this case also involves a 'focal' , region as part of itself. This 'focal' region is a region of dense concurrence of straight lines defined by the 'seat.' It is the region onto which there is so-called 'projection.'
( 96 ) Page 314:Both these types of feeling are the outcome of a complex process of massive simplification which is characteristic of higher grades of actual entities. They apparently have but slight importance in the constitutions of actual occasions in empty space; but they have dominating importance in the physical feelings belonging to the life-history of enduring organisms the inorganic and organic, alike.
( 97 ) Page 319:Reviewing the discussion in the preceding sections of this chapter and of chapter Iv of part II, we note that, in reference to any one actual occasion M, seven (but cf. Section VIIL) distinct considerations define loci composed of other actual occasions. In the first place, there are three loci defined by causal efficacy, namely, the 'causal past' of M, the 'causal future' of M, and the 'contemporaries' of M. An actual occasion p, belonging to M's causal past, is objectified for M by a perspective representation of its own (i.e., P's) qualities of feeling and intensities of feeling. There is a quantitative and qualitative vector flow of feeling from P to M; and in this way, what p is subjectively, belongs to M objectively. An [487] actual occasion Q, belonging to M's causal future, is in the converse relation to M, compared to P's relation. For the causal future is composed of those actual occasions which will have M in their respective causal pasts.
( 98 ) Page 319:actual occasions R and S, which are contemporary with M, are those actual occasions which lie neither in M's causal past, nor in M's causal future. The peculiarity of the locus of contemporaries of M is that any two of its members, such as R and s, need not be contemporaries of each other. They may be mutually contemporaries, but not necessarily. It is evident from the form of the definition of 'contemporary,' that if R be contemporary with M, then M is contemporary with R. This peculiarity of the locus of M's contemporaries that R and s may be both contemporaries of M, but not contemporaries of each other points to another set of loci. A 'duration' is a locus of actual occasions, such that (a) any two members of the locus are contemporaries, and (b) that any actual occasion, not belonging to the duration, is in the causal past or causal future of some members of the duration.
( 99 ) Page 320:A duration is a complete locus of actual occasions m 'unison of becoming,' or in 'concrescent unison.' It is the old-fashioned 'present state of the world.' In reference to a given duration, D, the actual world is divided 'n o three mutually exclusive loci one of these loci is the duration D itself. Another of these loci is composed of actual occasions which lie in the past of some members of D: this locus is the 'past of the duration D.' The remaining locus is composed of actual occasions which lie in the future of some members of D: this locus is the 'future of the duration D.
( 100 ) Page 320: Thus the past of a duration D includes the whole past of any actual occasion belonging to D, such as M for example, and it also includes some , ' Also the future of the duration D includes the of M s contemporaries. . Whole future of M, and also includes some of M's contemporaries. So far, starting from an actual occasion M, we find six loci, or types of loci, defined purely in terms of notions derived from 'causal efficacy.' These loci are, M's causal past, M's causal future, M's contemporaries, the set of durations defined by M; and finally, taking any one such duration which we call D as typical, there is D's past, and D's future. Thus there are the three definite loci, the causal past, the causal future, and the contemporaries, which are defined uniquely by M; and there are the set of durations defined by M, and the set of 'durational pasts' and the set of 'durational futures.' The paradox which has been introduced by the modern theory of relativity is twofold. First, the actual occasion M does not, as a general characteristic of all actual occasions, define a unique duration; and secondly, such a unique duration, if defined, does not include all the contemporaries of M.
( 101 ) Page 321:But among the set of durations, there may be one with a unique association with M. For the mode of presentational immediacy objectifies for M the actual occasions within one particular duration. This is the 'presented duration.' such a presented duration is an inherent factor in the character of an 'enduring physical object.' It is practically identical with the strain-locus. This locus is the reason why there is a certain absoluteness in the notions of rest, velocity, and acceleration. For this presented duration is the spatialized world in which the physical object is at rest, at least momentarily for its occasion M. This spatialized world is objectified for M by M's own conditioned range of feeling-tones which have been inherited from the causal past of the actual occasion [489] in question, namely, of M. Thus the presented duration is with peculiar vividness part of the character of the actual occasion. A historic route of actual occasions, each with its presented duration, constitutes a physical object.
( 102 ) Page 321:Our partial consciousness of the objectifications of the presented duration constitutes our knowledge of the present world, so far as it is derived from the senses. Remembering that objectifications constitute the objective conditions from which an actual occasion (M) initiates its successive phases of feeling, we must admit that, in the most general sense, the objectifications express the causality by which the external world fashions the actual occasion in question. Thus the objectifications of the presented duration represent a recovery by its contemporaries of a very real efficacy in the determination of M. It is true that the eternal objects which effect this objectification belong to the feeling-tones which M derives from the past. But it is a past which is largely common to M and to the presented duration. Thus by the intermediacy of the past, the presented duration has its efficacy in the production of M. This efficacy does not derogate from the principle of the independence of contemporary occasions. For the contemporary occasions in the presented duration are only efficacious through the feeling-tones of their sources, and not through their own immediate feeling-tones.
( 103 ) Page 321:Thus in so far as Bergson ascribes the 'spatialization' of the world to a distortion introduced by the intellect, he is in error. This spatialization is a real factor in the physical constitution of every actual occasion belonging to the life-history of an enduring physical object. For actual occasions in so-called 'empty space,' there is no reason to believe that any duration has been singled out for spatialization; that is to say, that physical perception in the mode of presentational immediacy is negligible for such occasions. The reality of the rest and the motion of enduring physical objects depends on this spatialization for occasions in their historic routes. The presented duration is the duration in respect to which the enduring object is momentarily at rest. It is that duration which is the strain-locus of that occasion in the life-history of the enduring object.
( 104 ) Page 322:[49l] THE identification of the strain-locus with a duration is only an approximation based upon empirical evidence. Their definitions are entirely different. A duration is a complete set of actual occasions, such that all the members are mutually contemporary one with the other. This property is expressed by the statement that the members enjoy 'unison of immediacy.' The completeness consists in the fact that no other actual occasion can be added to the set without loss of this unison of immediacy. Every occasion outside the set is in the past or in the future of some members of the set, and is contemporary with other members of the set. According as an occasion is in the past, or the future, of some members of a duration, the occasion is said to be in the past, or in the future, of that duration.
( 105 ) Page 324:It is to be noted that this doctrine of presentational immediacy and of the strain-locus entirely depends upon a definition of straight lines in terms of mere extensiveness. If the definition depends upon the actual physical occasions beyond the experient, the experient should find the actual physical structures of his environment a block, or an assistance, to his 'projection' to focal regions beyond them. The projection of sensa in presentational immediacy depends entirely upon the state of the brain and upon systematic geometrical relations characterizing the brain. How the brain is excited, whether by visual stimuli through the eye, or by auditory stimuli through the ear, or by the excessive consumption of alcohol, or by hysterical emotion, is completely indifferent; granted the proper excitement of the brain, the experient will perceive some definite contemporary region illustrated by the projected sensa. The indifference of presentational immediacy to contemporary actualities in the environment cannot be exaggerated. It is only by reason of the fortunate dependence of the experient and of these contemporary actualities on a common past, that presentational immediacy is more than a barren aesthetic display. It does display something, namely, the real extensiveness of the contemporary world. It involves the contemporary actualities but only objectifies them as conditioned by extensive relations. It displays a system pervading the world, a world including and transcending the experient. It is a vivid display of systematic real potentiality, inclusive of the experient and reaching beyond it. In so far as straight lines can only be defined in terms of measurements, requiring particular actual occasions for their performance, the theory of geometry lacks the requisite disengagement from particular physical fact. The requisite geometrical forms can then only be introduced after examination of the particular actual occasions required for measurement. But the theory of 'projection ' explained above, requires that the definition of a complete straight line be logically prior to the particular actualities in the extensive environment. This requisite has been supplied by the preceding theory of straight lines (cf. Ch. III$). The projectors do depend upon the one experient occasion. But even this dependence merely requires that component feelings of that occasion should participate in certain geometric elements, namely, a set of points, and the straight lines defined by them, among their data. Thus, according to this explanation, presentational immediacy is the mode in which vivid feelings of contemporary geometrical relations, with especial emphasis on certain 'focal' regions, enter into experience.
( 106 ) Page 332:presupposed are the geometrical measurements constituting the coordinates of the various points involved. various physical quantities enter as the 'constants' involved in the algebraic functions concerned. These constants depend on the actual occasions which atomize the extensive continuum. The physical properties of the medium are expressed by various conditions satisfied by this integral.
( 107 ) Page 333:It is to be noted, however, that the conclusions of this discussion involve no objection to the modem treatment of ultimate physical laws in the guise of a problem in differential geometry. The integral impetus is an extensive quantity, a 'length.' The differential element of impetus is the differential element of systematic length weighted with the individual peculiarities of its relevant environment. The whole theory of the physical field is the interweaving of the individual peculiarities of actual occasions upon the background of systematic geometry.' This systematic geometry expresses the most general 'substantial form' inherited throughout the vast cosmic society which [508] constitutes the primary real potentiality conditioning concrescence." In this doctrine, the organic philosophy is very near to the philosophy of Descartes.
( 108 ) Page 333:(i) actual occasions are immovable, so that the doctrine of coincidence is nonsense.
( 109 ) Page 347:[527] But civilized intuition has always, although obscurely, grasped the problem as double and not as single. There is not the mere problem of fluency and permanence. There is the double problem: actuality with permanence, requiring fluency as its completion; and actuality with fluency, requiring permanence as its completion. The first half of the problem concerns the completion of God's primordial nature by the derivation of his consequent nature from the temporal world. The second half of the problem concerns the completion of each fluent actual occasion by its function of objective immortality, devoid of 'perpetual perishing,' that is to say, 'everlasting.'
( 110 ) Page 347:This double problem cannot be separated into two distinct problems. Either side can only be explained in terms of the other. The consequent nature of God is the fluent world become 'everlasting' by its objective immortality in God. Also the objective immortality of actual occasions requires the primordial permanence of God, whereby the creative advance ever reestablishes itself endowed with initial subjective aim derived from the relevance of God to the evolving world.
( 111 ) Page 349:In every respect God and the world move conversely to each other in respect to their process. God is .primordially one, namely, he is the primordial unity of relevance of the many potential forms; in the process he acquires a consequent multiplicity, which the primordial character absorbs into its own unity. The world is primordially many, namely, the many actual occasions with their physical finitude; in the process it acquires a consequent unity, which is a novel occasion and is absorbed into the multiplicity of the primordial character. Thus God is to be conceived as one and as many in the converse sense in which the world is to be conceived as many and as one. The theme of cosmology, which is the basis of all religions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the world passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God's vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption of the world's multiplicity of effort.