Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

But we must—to avoid ‘solipsism of the present moment’—include in direct perception something more than presentational immediacy. For the organic theory, the most primitive perception is ‘feeling the body as functioning.’ This is a feeling of the world in the past; it is the inheritance of the world as a complex of feeling; namely, it is the feeling of derived feelings. The later, sophisticated perception is ‘feeling the contemporary world.’ Fiven this presentational immediacy begins withp. 126 sense-presentation of the contemporary body. The body, however, is only a peculiarly intimate bit of the world. Just as Descartes said, ‘this body is mine’; so he should have said, ‘this actual world is mine.’ My process of ‘being myself’ is my origination from my possession of the world.

It is obvious that there arise the questions of comparative relevance and of comparative vagueness, which constitute the perspective of the world. For example, the body is that portion of the world where, in causal perception, there is some distinct separation of regions. There is not, in causal perception, this distinctness for the past world external to the body. We eke out our knowledge by ‘symbolic transference’ from causal perception to sense-presentation, and vice versa.

Those realists, who base themselves upon the notion of substance, do not get away from the notion of actual entities which move and change. From the point of view of the philosophy of organism, there is great merit in Newton’s immovable receptacles. But for Newton they are eternal. Locke’s notion of time hits the mark better: time is ‘perpetually perishing.’ In the organic philosophy an actual entity has ‘perished’ when it is complete. The pragmatic use of the actual entity, constituting its static life, lies in the future. The creature perishes and is immortal. The actual entities beyond it can say, ‘It is mine.’ But the possession imposes conformation.

This conception of an actual entity in the fluent world is little more than an expansion of a sentence in the Timaeus: ° “But that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason, is always in the process of becoming and perishing and never really is.” Bergson, in his protest against “spatialization,” is only echoing Plato’s phrase ‘and never really is.’

® Jowett’s translation. Professor A. E. Taylor in his Commentary On the Timaeus renders the word 86€a by ‘belief’ or ‘judgment’ in the place of Jowett’s word ‘opinion.’ Taylor’s translation brings out the

Platonic influence in Descartes’ Meditations, namely Plato’s 56€a is the
Cartesian judicium.

CHAPTER III

THE ORDER OF NATURE

SECTION I

In this, and in the next chapter, among modern philosophers we are chiefly concerned with Hume and with Kant, and among ancient philosophers with the Timaeus of Plato. These chapters are concerned with the allied problems of ‘order in the universe,’ of ‘induction,’ and of ‘general truths.’ The present chapter is wholly concerned with the topic of ‘order.’ For the organic doctrine the problem of order assumes primary importance. No actual entity can rise beyond what the actual world as a datum from its standpoint—its actual world—allows it to be. Each such entity arises from a primary phase of the concrescence of objectifications which are in some respects settled: the basis of its experience is ‘given.’ Now the correlative of ‘order’ is ‘disorder.’ There can be no peculiar meaning in the notion of ‘order’ unless this contrast holds. Apart from it, ‘order’ must be a synonym for ‘givenness.’ But ‘order?’ means more than ‘vivenness, though it presupposes ‘givenness,’ ‘disorder’ is also ‘given.’ Each actual entity requires a totality of ‘sivenness, and each totality of ‘givenness’ attains its measure of ‘order.’

Four grounds of ‘order’ at once emerge:

(i) That ‘order’ in the actual world is differentiated from mere ‘givenness’ by introduction of adaptation for the attainment of an end.

(ii) That this end is concerned with the gradations of intensity in the satisfactions of actual entities (members of the nexus) in whose formal constitutions the nexus

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p. 128

(ie. antecedent members of the nexus) in question is objectified.

(iii) That the heightening of intensity arises from order such that the multiplicity of components in the nexus can enter explicit feeling as contrasts, and are not dismissed into negative prehensions as incompatibilities.

(iv) That ‘intensity’ in the formal constitution of a subject-superject involves ‘appetition’ in its objective functioning as super]ect.

‘Order’ is a mere generic term: there can only be some definite specific ‘order,’ not merely ‘order’ in the vague. Thus every definite total phase of ‘givenness’ involves a reference to that specific ‘order’ which is its dominant ideal, and involves the specific ‘disorder’ due to its inclusion of ‘given’ components which exclude the attainment of the full ideal. The attainment is partial, and thus there is ‘disorder’; but there is some attainment, and thus there is some ‘order.’ There is not just one ideal ‘order’ which all actual entities should attain and fail to attain. In each case there is an ideal peculiar to each particular actual entity, and arising from the dominant components in its phase of ‘givenness.’ This notion of ‘dominance’ will have to be discussed later in connection with the notion of the systematic character of a ‘cosmic epoch’ and of the subordinate systematic characters of ‘societies’ included in a cosmic epoch. The notion of one ideal arises from the disastrous overmoralization of thought under the influence of fanaticism, or pedantry. The notion of a dominant ideal peculiar to each actual entity is Platonie.

It is notable that no biological science has been able to express itself apart from phraseology which is meaningless unless it refers to ideals proper to the organism in question. This aspect of the universe impressed itself on that great biologist and philosopher, Aristotle. His philosophy led to a wild overstressing of the notion of final causes during the Christian middle ages; and thence, by a reaction, to the correlative overstressing ofp. 129 the notion of ‘efficient causes’ during the modern scientific period. One task of a sound metaphysics is to exhibit final and efficient causes in their proper relation to each other. The necessity and the difficulty of this task are stressed by Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.