Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

Thus a supplementary phase succeeds to the initial purely physical phase. This supplementary phase starts with two subordinate phases of conceptual origination, and then passes into phases of integration, and of reintegration, in which propositional feelings, and intellectual feelings, may emerge. In the present chapter we are concerned with the first two phases of merely conceptual origination. These are not phases of conceptual analysis, but of conceptual valuation. The subsequent analytic phases involve propositional feelings, and in certain circumstances issue in consciousness. But in this chapter, we are merely concerned with blind conceptual valuation, and with the effect of such valuation upon physical feelp. 379ings which lie in the future beyond the actual entities in which such valuations occur.

The initial problem is to discover the principles according to which some eternal objects are prehended positively and others are prehended negatively. Some are felt and others are eliminated.

In the solution of this problem five additional categoreal conditions must be added to the three such conditions which have already been explained. The conditions have regard to the origination, and coordination, of conceptual feelings. They govern the general process of ‘conceptual imagination,’ so far as concerns its origination from physical experience.

Category IV. The Category of Conceptual Valuation. From each physical feeling there is the derivation of a purely conceptual feeling whose datum is the eternal object exemplified in the definiteness of the actual entity, or the nexus, physically felt.

This category maintains the old principle that mentality originates from sensitive experience. It lays down the principle that all sensitive experience originates mental operations. It does not, however, mean that there is no origination of other mental operations derivative from these primary mental operations. Nor does it mean that these mental operations involve consciousness, which is the product of intricate integration.

The mental pole originates as the conceptual counterpart of operations in the physical pole. The two poles are inseparable in their origination. The mental pole starts with the conceptual registration of the physical pole. This conceptual registration constitutes the sole datum of experience according to the sensationalist school. Writers of this school entirely neglect physical feelings, originating in the physical pole. Hume’s ‘impressions of sensation’ and Kant’s sensational data are considered in terms only applicable to conceptual registration. Hence Kant’s notion of the chaos of such ulti-

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mate data. Also Hume—at least, in his Treatise—can only find differences of ‘force and vivacity.’

The subjective form of a conceptual feeling is valuation. These valuations are subject to the Category of Subjective Unity. Thus the conceptual registration 1s conceptual valuation; and conceptual valuation introduces creative purpose. The mental pole introduces the subject as a determinant of its own concrescence. The mental pole is the subject determining its own ideal of itself by reference to eternal principles of valuation autonomously modified in their application to its own physical objective datum. Every actual entity is ‘in time’ so far as its physical pole is concerned, and is ‘out of time’ so far as its mental pole is concerned. It is the union of two worlds, namely, the temporal world, and the world of autonomous valuation. The integration of each simple physical feeling with its conceptual counterpart produces in a subsequent phase a physical feeling whose subjective form of re-enaction has gained or lost subjective intensity according to the valuation up, or the valuation down, in the conceptual feeling. So far there is merely subjective readjustment of the subjective forms. This is the phase of physical purpose. The effect of the conceptual feeling is thus, so far, merely to provide that the modified subjective form is not merely derived from the re-enaction of the objectified actual entity. Also, in the complex subsequent integrations, we find that the conceptual counterpart has a réle in detachment from the physical feeling out of which it originates.

Category V. The Category of Conceptual Reversion. There is secondary origination of conceptual feelings with data which are partially identical with, and partially diverse from, the eternal objects forming the data in the primary phase of the mental pole; the determination of identity and diversity depending on the subjective aim at attaining depth of intensity by reason of contrast.

Thus the first phase of the mental pole is conceptual

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reproduction, and the second phase is a phase of conceptual reversion. In this second phase the proximate novelties are conceptually felt. This is the process by which the subsequent enrichment of subjective forms, both in qualitative pattern, and in intensity through contrast, is made possible by the positive conceptual prehension of relevant alternatives." There is a conceptual contrast of physical incompatibles. This is the category which, as thus stated, seems to limit the strict application of Plato’s principle of reminiscence, and of Hume’s principle of recollection. Probably it does not contradict anything that Plato meant by his principle. But it does limit the rigid application of Hume’s principle. Indeed Hume himself admitted exceptions. It is the category by which novelty enters the world; so that even amid stability there is never undifferentiated endurance. But, as the category states, reversion is always limited by the necessary inclusion of elements identical with elements in feelings of the antecedent phase. By the category of subjective unity, and by the seventh category of subjective harmony, to be explained later, all origination of feelings is governed by the subjective imposition of aptitude for final synthesis. Also by the category of objective identity this aptitude always has its ground in the twoway functionings of self-identical elements. Then in synthesis there must always be a ground of identity and an aim at contrast. The aim at contrast arises from the depth of intensity promoted by contrast. The joint necessity of this ground of identity, and this aim at contrast, is partially expressed in this category of conceptual reversion. This ‘aim at contrast’ is the expression of the ultimate creative purpose that each unification shall achieve some maximum depth of intensity of feeling, subject to the conditions of its concrescence. This ultimate purpose is formulated in Category VIII. The question, how, and in what sense, one unrealized

* For another discussion of this topic, cf. my Religion in the Making, Ch. III, Sect. VII.

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