Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

though elusive, element in our perceptions of presentational immediacy. This ‘withness’ is the trace of the origination of the feeling concerned, enshrined by that feeling in its subjective form and in its objective datum. But in itself this ‘withness of the body’ can be isolated as a component feeling in the final ‘satisfaction.’ From this point of view, the body, or its organ of sensation, becomes the objective datum of a component feeling; and this feeling has its own subjective form. Also this feeling is physical, so that we must look for an eternal object, to be a determinant of the definiteness of the body, as objective datum. This component feeling will be called the feeling of bodily efficacy. It is more primitive than the feeling of presentational immediacy which issues from it. Both in common sense and in physiological theory, this bodily efficacity is a component presupposed by the presentational immediacy and leading up to it. Thus, in the immediate subject, the presentational immediacy is to be conceived as originated in a late phase, by the synthesis of the feeling of bodily efficacity with other feelings. We have now to consider the nature of the other feelings, and the complex eternal object concerned in the feeling of bodily efficacity.

In the first place, this eternal object must be partially identified with the eternal object in the final feeling of presentational immediacy. The whole point of the connection between the two feelings is that the presentational immediacy is derivative from the bodily efficacy. The present perception is strictly inherited from the antecedent bodily functioning, unless all physiological teaching is to be abandoned. Both eternal objects are highly complex; and the complex elements of the second eternal object must at least be involved in the complex elements of the former eternal object.

This complex eternal object is analysable into a sensedatum 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

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feeling. But this feeling of bodily efficacy in the final percipient is the re-enaction 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.’ These lines enter into feeling through a process of integration of yet simpler feelings which primarily concern the ‘seat’ of the pattern. These lines have a twofold function as determinants of the feeling. They define the ‘strain’ of the feeler, and they define the focal region which they thus relate to the feeler. In so far as we are merely considering an abstract pattern, we are dealing with an abstract eternal object. But as a determinant of a concrete feeling in a concrete percipient, we are dealing with the feeling as relating its subject (which includes the ‘seat’ in its volume) to a definite spatial region (the focal region) external to itself. This definite contemporary focal region is a nexus which is part of the objective datum. Thus the feeling of bodily efficacity is the feeling of the sense-datum as generally implicated in the whole region (of antecedent ‘seats’ and focal regions) geometrically defined by the inherited strains. This patterned region is peculiarly dominated by the final ‘seat’ in the body of the feeler, and by the final ‘focal’ region. Thus the sense-datum has a general spatial relation, in which two spatial regions are dominant. Feelings of this sort are inherited by many strands from the antecedent bodily nerves. But in considering one definite feeling of presentational immediacy, these many strands of transmission of bodily efficacy, in their final deliverance to the ultimate percipient, converge upon the same focal region as picked out by the many bodily ‘strains ©

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In the integration of these feelings a double act of transmutation is achieved. In each of the successive feelings transmitted along the successive actual entities of a bodily nervous strand there are two regions mainly concerned; and there is a relation between them constituted by intermediate regions picked out by the linkage of the pattern. One region is the focal region already discussed, the other region is the seat in the immediate subject, constituting its geometrical standpoint. The ‘strain’ of the final actual entity defines the ‘seat’ and the ‘focal region’ and the intermediary regions, and more vaguely the whole of a ‘presented’ space. This final feeling of bodily strain—in the sense of ‘strain’ defined in the previous section—is the last of a route of analogous feelings inherited one from the other along the series of bodily occasions along some nerve, or other path in the body. There will be parallel routes of such analogous feelings, which finally converge with concurrent reinforcement upon the single occasion, or route of occasions, which is the ultimate percipient.

Each of these bodily strain-feelings defines its own seat and its own focal region and intermediaries. The sense-datum is vaguely associated with the external world as thus felt and defined. But as such feelings are ‘transmuted,’ either gradually, or at critical nodes in the body, there is an increasing development of special emphasis. Now emphasis is valuation, and can only be changed by renewed valuation. But valuation arises in conceptual feelings. The conceptual counterpart of these physical feelings can be analysed into many conceptual feelings, associating the sense-datum with various regions defined by the strain. This conceptual feeling, by its reference to definite regions, belongs to the secondary type termed ‘propositional feelings.’ One subordinate propositional feeling associates the sense-datum with the ‘seat’ of the feeler, another with the ‘focal’ region of the feeler, another with the intermediary region of the feeler, another with the seats of the antecedent elements of the

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