Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

subject merely receives the physical feelings, confirms their valuations according to the ‘order’ of that epoch, and transmits by reason of its own objective immortality. Its own flash of autonomous individual experience is negligible for the science which is tracing transmissions up to the conscious experience of a final observer. But as soon as individual experience is not negligible, the autonomy of the subject in the modification of its initial subjective aim must be taken into account. Each creative act is the universe incarnating itself as one, and there is nothing above it by way of final condition.

SECTION II

The general doctrine of the previous section requires an examination of principles regulating the transmission of feelings into data for novel feelings in a new concrescence. Since no feeling can be abstracted from its subject, this transmission is merely another way of considering the objectification of actual entities. A feeling will be called ‘physical’ when its datum involves objectifications of other actual entities. In the previous chapter the special case of ‘simple physical feelings’ was discussed. A feeling belonging to this special case has as its datum only one actual entity, and this actual entity is objectified by one of its feelings. All the more complex kinds of physical feelings arise in subsequent phases of concrescence, in virtue of integrations of simple, physical feelings with each other and with conceptual feelings. But before proceeding to these more complex physical feelings, a subdivision of simple physical feelings must be considered. Such feelings are subdivided into ‘pure physical feelings’ and ‘hybrid physical feelings.’ In a ‘pure physical feeling’ the actual entity which is the datum is objectified by one of its own physical feelings. Thus having regard to the ‘re-enaction’ which is characteristic of the subjective form of a simple physical feeling, we have—in the case of the simpler actual entities— an example of the transference of energy in the physicalp. 376 world. When the datum is an actual entity of a highly complex grade, the physical feeling by which it is objectified as a datum may be of a highly complex character, and the simple notion of a transference of some form of energy to the new subject may entirely fail to exhaust the important aspects of the pure physical feeling in question.

In a ‘hybrid physical feeling’ the actual entity forming the datum is objectified by one of its own conceptual feelings. Thus having regard to the element of autonomy which is characteristic of the subjective form of a conceptual feeling, we have—in the case of the more complex actual entities—an example of the origination and direction of energy in the physical world. In general, this simplified aspect of a hybrid physical feeling does not exhaust its rdle in the concrescence of its subject.

The disastrous separation of body and mind, characteristic of philosophical systems which are in any important respect derived from Cartesianism, is avoided in the philosophy of organism by the doctrines of hybrid physical feelings and of the transmuted feelings. In these ways conceptual feelings pass into the category of physical feelings. Also conversely, physical feelings give rise to conceptual feelings, and conceptual feelings give rise to other conceptual feelings—according to the doctrines of the categories of Conceptual Valuation (Category IV), and of Conceptual Reversion (Category V), to be discussed in the subsequent sections of this chapter.

One important characteristic of a hybrid feeling is the intensity of the conceptual feeling which originates from it, according to the category of subjective valuation. In the next section, this categoreal condition of ‘conceptual valuation’ is considered in relation to all physical feelings, ‘pure’ and ‘hybrid’ alike. The present section will only anticipate that discussion so far as hybrid feelings are concerned. Thus the part of the general category now relevant can be formulated:

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A hybrid physical feeling originates for its subject a conceptual feeling with the same datum as that of the conceptual feeling of the antecedent subject. But the two conceptual feelings in the two subjects respectively may have different subjective forms.

There is an autonomy in the formation of the subjective forms of conceptual feelings, conditioned only by the unity of the subject as expressed in categoreal conditions I, VII, and VIII. These conditions for unity correlate the sympathetic subjective form of the hybrid feeling with the autonomous subjective form of the derivative conceptual feeling with the same subject.

There are evidently two sub-species of hybrid feelings: (i) those which feel the conceptual feelings of temporal actual entities, and (11) those which feel the conceptual feelings of God.

The objectification of God in a temporal subject is effected by the hybrid feelings with God’s conceptual feelings as data. Those of God’s feelings which are positively prehended are those with some compatibility of contrast, or of identity, with physical feelings transmitted from the temporal world. But when we take God into account, then we can assert without any qualification Hume’s principle, that all conceptual feelings are derived from physical feelings. The limitation of Hume’s principle introduced by the considerationof the Category of Conceptual Reversion (cf.Sect. III of this chapter) is to be construed as referring merely to the transmission from the temporal world, leaving God out of account. Apart from the intervention of God, there could be nothing new in the world, and no order in the world. The course of creation would be a dead level of ineffectiveness, with all balance and intensity progressively excluded by the cross currents of incompatibility. The novel hybrid feelings derived from God, with the derivative sympathetic conceptual valuations, are the foundations of progress.

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SECTION III

Conceptual feelings are primarily derivate from physical feelings, and secondarily from each other. In this statement, the consideration of God’s intervention is excluded. When this intervention is taken into account, all conceptual feelings must be derived from physical feelings. Unfettered conceptual valuation, ‘infinite’ in Spinoza’s sense of that term, is only possible once in the universe; since that creative act is objectively immortal as an inescapable condition characterizing creative action.

But, unless otherwise stated, only the temporal entities of the actual world will be considered. We have to discuss the categoreal conditions for such derivation of conceptual feelings from the physical feelings relating to the temporal world. By the categoreal condition of subjective unity—Category I—the initial phase of physical feelings has the propositional unity of feelings compatible for integration into one feeling of the actual world. But the completed determination of the subjective form of this final ‘satisfaction’ awaits the origination of conceptual feelings whose subjective forms introduce the factor of ‘valuation,’ that is, ‘valuation up’ or ‘valuation down.’