Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

Also touch objectifies the chair in one way, and objectifies the hands in another way, as elements in the experience of the subject. But the eyes and the hands are in the past (the almost immediate past) and the chair is in the present. The chair, thus objectified, is the objectification of a contemporary nexus of actual entities in its unity as one nexus. This nexus is illustrated as to its constitution by the spatial region, with its perspective relations. This region is, in fact, atomized by the members of the nexus. By the operation of the category of transmutation (cf. Parts III and IV), in the objectification an abstraction is made from the multiplicity of members and from all components of their formal constitutions, except the occupation of this region. This prehension, in the particular example considered, will be termed the prehension of a ‘chair-image.’ Also the intervention of the past is not confined to antecedent eyes and hands. There is a more remote past throughout nature external to the body. The direct relevance of this remote past, relevant by reason of its direct objectification in the immediate subject, is practically negligible, so far as concerns prehensions of a strictly physical type.

But external nature has an indirect relevance by the transmission through it of analogous prehensions. In this way there are in it various historical routes of intermediate objectifications. Such relevant historical routes lead up to various parts of the animal body, and transmit into it prehensions which form the physical influence of the external environment on the animal body. But this external environment which is in the past of the concrescent subject is also, with negligible exceptions, in the past of the nexus which is the objectified chair-image. If there be a ‘real chair,’ there will be another historical route of objectifications from nexus to nexus in this environment. The members of each nexus will be mutually contemporaries. Also the historical route will lead up to the nexus which is the chair-image. The complete nexus, composed of this historical route and thep. 99 chair-image, will form a ‘corpuscular’ society. This society is the ‘real chair.’

The prehensions of the concrescent subject and the formal constitutions of the members of the contemporary nexus which is the chair-image are thus conditioned by the properties of the same environment in the past. The animal body is so constructed that, with rough accuracy and in normal conditions, important emphasis is thus laid upon those regions in the contemporary world which are particularly relevant for the future existence of the enduring object of which the immediate percipient is one occasion.

A reference to the Category of Transmutation will show that perception of contemporary ‘images’ in the mode of ‘presentational immediacy’ is an ‘impure’ prehension. The subsidiary ‘pure’ physical prehensions are the components which provide some definite information as to the physical world; the subsidiary ‘pure’ mental prehensions are the components by reason of which the theory of ‘secondary qualities’ was introduced into the theory of perception. The account here given traces back these secondary qualities to their root in physical prehensions expressed by the ‘withness of the body.’

If the familiar correlations between physical paths and the life-histories of a chair and of the animal body are not satisfied, we are apt to say that our perceptions are delusive. The word ‘delusive’ is all very well as a technical term; but it must not be misconstrued to mean that what we have directly perceived, we have not directly perceived. Our direct perception, via our senses, of an immediate extensive shape, in a certain geometrical perspective to ourselves, and in certain general geometrical relations to the contemporary world, remains an ultimate fact. Our inferences are at fault. In Cartesian phraseology, it is a final “inspectio’ (also termed ‘“intuatro’) which, when purged of all ‘judicium’—1i.e. of ‘inference’—is final for belief. This whole question of ‘delusive’ perception must be considered later (cf. Part III, Chs. III to V) in more

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detail. We can, however, see at once that there are grades of ‘delusiveness.’ There is the non-delusive case, when we see a chair-image and there is a chair. There is the partially delusive case when we have been looking in a mirror; in this case, the chair-image we see is not the culmination of the corpuscular society of entities which we call the real chair. Finally, we may have been taking drugs, so that the chair-image we see has no familiar counterpart in any historical route of a corpuscular society. Also there are other delusive grades where the lapse of time is the main element. These cases are illustrated by our perceptions of the heavenly bodies. In delusive cases we are apt, in a confusing way, to say that the societies of entities which we did not see but correctly inferred are the things that we ‘really’ saw.

The conclusion of this discussion is that the ingression of the eternal objects termed ‘sense-data,’ into the experience of a subject cannot be construed as the simple objectification of the actual entity to which, in ordinary speech, we ascribe that sense-datum as a quality. The ingression involves a complex relationship, whereby the sense-datum emerges as the ‘given’ eternal object by which some past entities are objectified (for example, colour seen with the eyes and bad temper inherited from the viscera) and whereby the sense-datum also enters into the objectification of a society of actual entities in the contemporary world. Thus a sense-datum has ingression into experience by reason of its forming the what of a very complex multiple integration of prehensions within that occasion. For example, the ingression of a visual sense-datum involves the causal objectification of various antecedent bodily organs and the presentational objectification of the shape seen, this shape being a nexus of contemporary actual entities. In this account of the ingression of sensedata, the animal body is nothing more than the most intimately relevant part of the antecedent settled world. To sum up this account: When we perceive a contemporary extended shape which we term a ‘chair,’ the sense-

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