Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

of ‘prehensions.’ There are two species of prehensions, the ‘positive species’ and the ‘negative species. An actual entity has a perfectly definite bond with each item in the universe. This determinate bond is its prehension of that item. A negative prehension is the definite exclusion of that item from positive contribution to the subject’s own real internal constitution. This doctrine involves the position that a negative prehension expresses a bond. A positive prehension is the definite inclusion of that item into positive contribution to the subject’s own real internal constitution. This positive inclusion is called its ‘feeling’ of that item. Other entities are required to express how any one item is felt. All actual entities in the actual world, relatively to a given actual entity as ‘subject,’ are necessarily ‘felt’ by that subject, though in general vaguely. An actual entity as felt is said to be ‘objectified’ for that subject. Only a selection of eternal objects are ‘felt’? by a given subject, and these eternal objects are then said to have ‘ingression’ in that subject. But those eternal objects which are not felt are not therefore negligible. For each negative prehension has its own subjective form, however trivial and faint. It adds to the emotional complex, though not to the objective data. The emotional complex is the subjective form of the final ‘satisfaction.’ The importance of negative prehensions arises from the fact, that (i) actual entities form a system, in the sense of entering into each other’s constitutions, (ii) that by the ontological principle every entity is felt by some actual entity, (iil) that, as a consequence of (1) and (ii), every entity in the actual world of a concrescent actuality has some gradation of real relevance to that concrescence, (iv) that, in consequence of (iii), the negative prehension of an entity is a positive fact with its emotional subjective from, (v) there is a mutual sensitivity of the subjective forms of prehensions, so that they are not indifferent to each other, (vi) the concrescence issues in one concrete feeling, the satisfaction.

p. 67

SECTION II

That we fail to find in experience any elements intrinsically incapable of exhibition as examples of general theory, is the hope of rationalism. This hope is not a metaphysical premise. It is the faith which forms the motive for the pursuit of all sciences alike, including metaphysics.

In so far as metaphysics enables us to apprehend the rationality of things, the claim is justified. It is always open to us, having regard to the imperfections of all metaphysical systems, to lose hope at the exact point where we find ourselves. The preservation of such faith must depend on an ultimate moral intuition into the nature of intellectual action—that it should embody the adventure of hope. Such an intuition marks the point where metaphysics—and indeed every science—gains assurance from religion and passes over into religion. But in itself the faith does not embody a premise from which the theory starts; it is an ideal which is seeking satisfaction. In so far as we believe that doctrine, we are rationalists.

There must, however, be limits to the claim that all the elements in the universe are explicable by ‘theory.’ For ‘theory’ itself requires that there be ‘given’ elements so as to form the material for theorizing. Plato himself recognizes this limitation: I quote from Professor A. E. Taylor’s summary of the Timaeus:

“Tn the real world there is always, over and above ‘law,’ a factor of the ‘simply given’ or ‘brute fact,’ not accounted for and to be accepted simply as given. It is the business of science never to acquiesce in the merely given, to seek to ‘explain’ it as the consequence, in virtue of rational law, of some simpler initial ‘given.’ But, however far science may carry this procedure, it is always forced to retain some element of brute fact, the merely given, in its account of things. It is the presence in nature of this element of the given, this surd or irrational as it hasp. 68 sometimes been called, which Timaeus appears to be personifying in his language about necessity.” *

So far as the interpretation of Plato is concerned, I rely upon the authority of Professor Taylor. But, apart from this historical question, a clear understanding of the ‘given’ elements in the world is essential for any form of Platonic realism.

For rationalistic thought, the notion of ‘givenness’ carries with it a reference beyond the mere data in question. It refers to a ‘decision’ whereby what is ‘given’ is separated off from what for that occasion is ‘not given.’ This element of ‘givenness’ in things implies some activity procuring limitation. The word ‘decision’ does not here imply conscious judgment, though in some ‘decisions’ consciousness will be a factor. The word is used in its root sense of a ‘cutting off.’ The ontological principle declares that every decision is referable to one or more actual entities, because in separation from actual entities there is nothing, merely nonentity—‘The rest is silence.’

The ontological principle asserts the relativity of decision; whereby every decision expresses the relation of the actual thing, for which a decision is made, to an actual thing by which that decision is made. But ‘decision’ cannot be construed as a casual adjunct of an actual entity. It constitutes the very meaning of actuality. An actual entity arises from decisions for it, and by its very existence provides decisions for other actual entities which supersede it. Thus the ontological principle is the first stage in constituting a theory embracing the notions of ‘actual entity,’ ‘givenness,’ and ‘process.’ Just as ‘potentiality for process’ is the meaning of the more general term ‘entity,’ or ‘thing’; so ‘decision’ is the additional meaning imported by the word ‘actual’ into the phrase ‘actual entity.’ ‘Actuality’ is the decision amid ‘potentiality.’ It represents stubborn fact which cannot be evaded. The real internal constitution of an actual tee Plato, The Man and His Work, Lincoln MacVeagh, New York, entity progressively constitutes a decision conditioning the creativity which transcends that actuality. The Castle Rock at Edinburgh exists from moment to moment, and from century to century, by reason of the decision effected by its own historic route of antecedent occasions. And if, in some vast upheaval of nature, it were shattered into fragments, that convulsion would still be conditioned by the fact that it was the destruction of that rock. The point to be emphasized is the insistent particularity of things experienced and of the act of experiencing. Bradley’s doctrine *—Wolf-eating- Lamb as a universal qualifying the absolute—is a travesty of the evidence. That wolf eat that lamb at that spot at that time: the wolf knew it; the lamb knew it; and the carrion birds knew it. Explicitly in the verbal sentence, or implicitly in the understanding of the subject entertaining it, every expression of a proposition includes demonstrative elements. In fact each word, and each symbolic phrase, is such an element, exciting the conscious prehension of some entity belonging to one of the categories of existence.

SECTION III