Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

The bare character of mere responsive re-enaction constituting the original physical feeling in its first phase, is enriched in the second phase by the valuation accruing from integration with the conceptual correlate. In this way, the dipolar character of concrescent experience provides in the physical pole for the objective side of experience, derivative from an external actual world, and provides in the mental pole for the subjective side of experience, derivative from the subjective conceptual valuations correlate to the physical feelings. The mental operations have a double office. They achieve, in the immediate subject, the subjective aim of that subject as to the satisfaction to be obtained from its own initial data. In this way the decision derived from the actual world, which is the efficient cause, is completed by the decision embodied in the subjective aim which is the final cause. Secondly, the physical purposes of a subject by their valuations determine the relative efficiency of the various feelings to enter into the objectifications of that subject in the creative advance beyond itself. In this function, the mental operations determine their subject in its character of an efficient cause. Thus the mental pole is the link whereby the creativity is endowed with the double character of final causation, and efficient causation. The mental pole is constituted by the decisions in virtue of which matters of fact enter into the character of the creativity. It has no necessary connection with consciousness; though, where there is origination of intellectual feelings, consciousness does in fact enter into the subjective forms.

SECTION VIII

The second species of physical purposes is due to the origination of reversions in the mental pole. It is due to this second species that vibration and rhythm have ap. 424 dominating importance in the physical world. Reversions are the conceptions which arise by reason of the lure of contrast, as a condition for intensity of experience. This lure is expressible as a categoreal condition.

Categoreal Condition VIII. The Category of Subjective Intensity. The subject aim, whereby there is origination of conceptual feeling, is intensity of feeling (a) in the immediate subject, and (8) in the relevant future.

We first note (i) that intensity of feeling due to any realized ingression of an eternal object is heightened when that eternal object is one element in a realized contrast between eternal objects, and (11) that two or more contrasts may be incompatible for joint ingression, or may jointly enter into a higher contrast.

It follows that balanced complexity is the outcome of this final category of subjective aim. Here ‘complexity’ means the realization of contrasts, of contrasts of contrasts, and so on; and ‘balance’ means the absence of attenuations due to the elimination of contrasts which some elements in the pattern would introduce and other elements inhibit.

Thus there is the urge towards the realization of the maximum number of eternal objects subject to the restraint that they must be under conditions of contrast. But this limitation to ‘conditions of contrast’ is the demand for ‘balance.’ For ‘balance’ here means that no realized eternal object shall eliminate potential contrasts between other realized eternal objects. Such eliminations attenuate the intensities of feeling derivable from the ingressions of the various elements of the pattern. Thus so far as the immediate present subject is concerned, the origination of conceptual valuation according to Category IV is devoted to such a disposition of emphasis as to maximize the integral intensity derivable from the most favourable balance. The subjective aim is the selection of the balance amid the given materials. But one element in the immediate feelings of the concrescentp. 425 subject is comprised of the anticipatory feelings of the transcendent future in its relation to immediate fact. This is the feeling of the objective immortality inherent in the nature of actuality. Such anticipatory feelings involve realization of the relevance of eternal objects as decided in the primordial nature of God. In so far as these feelings in the higher organisms rise to important intensities there are effective feelings of the more remote alternative possibilities. Such feelings are the conceptual feelings which arise in accordance with the Category of Reversion (Category IV).

But there must be ‘balance,’ and ‘balance’ is the adjustment of identities and diversities for the introduction of contrast with the avoidance of inhibitions by incompatibilities. Thus this secondary phase, involving the future, introduces reversion and is subject to this final category. Each reverted conceptual feeling had its datum largely identical with that of its correlate primary feeling of the same pole. In this way, readiness for synthesis is promoted. But the introduction of contrast is obtained by the differences, or reversions, in some elements of the complex data. The category expresses the rule that what is identical, and what is reverted, are determined by the aim at a favourable balance. The reversion is due to the aim at complexity as one condition for intensity.

When this reverted conceptual feeling acquires a relatively high intensity of upward valuation in its subjective form, the resulting integration of physical feeling, primary conceptual feeling, and secondary conceptual feeling, produces a more complex physical purpose than in the former case when the reverted conceptual feeling was negligible. There is now the physical feeling as valued by its integration with the primary conceptual feeling, the integration with the contrasted secondary conceptual feeling, the heightening of the scale of subjective intensity by the introduction of conceptual contrast, and the concentration of this heightened intensity upon the revertedp. 426 feeling in virtue of its being the novel factor introducing the contrast. The physical purpose thus provides the creativity with a complex character, which is governed (1) by the category of conceptual reversion, in virtue of which the secondary conceptual feeling arises, (i1) by the category of transmutation, in virtue of which conceptual feeling can be transmitted as physical feeling, (iii) by the category of subjective harmony, in virtue of which the subjective forms of the two conceptual feelings are adjusted to procure the subjective aim, and (iv) by the category of subjective intensity, in virtue of which the aim is determined to the attainment of balanced intensity from feelings integrated in virtue of near-identity, and contrasted in virtue of reversions.

Thus in the successive occasions of an enduring object in which the inheritance is governed by this complex physical purpose, the reverted conceptual feeling is transmitted into the next occasion as physical feeling, and the pattern of the original physical feeling now reappears as the datum in the reverted conceptual feeling. Thus along the route of the life-history there is a chain of contrasts in the physical feelings of the successive occasions. This chain is inherited as a vivid contrast of physical feelings, and in each occasion there is the physical feeling with its primary valuation in contrast with the reverted conceptual feeling.