Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

of ‘substance,’ also emphasizes ‘change.’ Hume, who minimizes the notion of ‘substance,’ similarly emphasizes ‘change.’ He writes: “Now as time is composed of parts that are not coexistent, an unchangeable object, since it produces none but coexistent impressions, produces none that can give us the idea of time; and, consequently, that idea must be derived from a succession of changeable objects, and time in its first appearance can never be severed from such a succession.” *° Whereas Descartes writes: “ ... for this (i.e. ‘the nature of time or of the duration of things’) is of such a kind that its parts do not depend one upon the other, and never co-exist; and from the fact that we now are, it does not follow that we shall be a moment afterwards, if some cause—the same that first produced us—does not continue so to produce us; that is to say, to conserve us.” And again: “We shall likewise have a very different understanding of duration, order, and number, if in place of mingling with the idea that we have of them what properly speaking pertains to the conception of substance, we merely consider that the duration of each thing is a mode under which we shall consider this thing in so far as it continues to existvisnne a!”

We have certainly to make room in our philosophy for the two contrasted notions, one that every actual entity endures, and the other that every morning is a new fact with its measure of change.

These various aspects can be summed up in the statement that experience involves a becoming, that becoming means that something becomes, and that what becomes involves repetition transformed into novel immediacy.

This statement directly traverses one main presupposition which Descartes and Hume agree in stating explicitly. This presupposition is that of the individual independence of successive temporal occasions. For

1° Cf. Treatise, Part II, Sect. III.
11 Cf. Principles, Part I, 21, and 55.

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example, Descartes, in the passage cited above, writes: “(The nature of time) is such that its parts do not depend one upon the other. . . .”” Also Hume’s impressions are self-contained, and he can find no temporal relationship other than mere serial order. This statement about Hume requires qualifying so far as concerns the connection between ‘impressions’ and ‘ideas.’ There is a relation of ‘derivation’ of ‘ideas’ from ‘impressions’ which he is always citing and never discussing. So far as it is to be taken seriously—for he never refers it to a correlate ‘impression’—it constitutes an exception to the individual independence of successive ‘perceptions.’ This presupposition of individual independence is what I have elsewhere ** called, the ‘fallacy of simple location.’ The notion of ‘simple location’ is inconsistent with any admission of ‘repetition’; Hume’s difficulties arise from the fact that he starts with simple locations and ends with repetition. In the organic philosophy the notion of repetition is fundamental. The doctrine of objectification is an endeavor to express how what is settled in actuality is repeated under limitations, so as to be ‘given’ for immediacy. Later, in discussing ‘time,’ this doctrine will be termed the doctrine of ‘objective immortality.’

SECTION IV

The doctrine of the individual independence of real facts is derived from the notion that the subject-predicate form of statement conveys a truth which is metaphysically ultimate. According to this view, an individual substance with its predicates constitutes the ultimate type of actuality. If there be one individual, the philosophy is monistic; if there be many individuals, the philosophy is pluralistic. With this metaphysical presupposition, the relations between individual substances constitute metaphysical nuisances: there is no place for them. Accordingly—in defiance of the most obvious deliverance of our intuitive ‘prejudices’-—every

*? Cf. Science and the Modern World, Ch. III.

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respectable philosophy of the subject-predicate type is monistic.

The exclusive dominance of the substance-quality metaphysics was enormously promoted by the logical bias of the mediaeval period. It was retarded by the study of Plato and of Aristotle. These authors included the strains of thought which issued in this doctrine, but included them inconsistently mingled with other notions. The substance-quality metaphysics triumphed with exclusive dominance in Descartes’ doctrines. Unfortunately he did not realize that his notion of the ‘res vera’ did not entail the same disjunction of ultimate facts as that entailed by the Aristotelian notion of ‘primary substance.’ Locke led a revolt from this dominance, but inconsistently. For him and also for Hume, in the background and tacitly presupposed in all explanations, there remained the mind with its perceptions. The perceptions, for Hume, are what the mind knows about itself; and tacitly the knowable facts are always treated as qualities of a subject—the subject being the mind. His final criticism of the notion of the ‘mind’ does not alter the plain fact that the whole of the previous discussion has included this presupposition. Hume’s final criticism only exposes the metaphysical superficiality of his preceding exposition.

In the philosophy of organism a subject-predicate proposition is considered as expressing a high abstraction.

The metaphysical superiority of Locke over Hume is exhibited in his wide use of the term ‘idea,’ which Locke himself introduced and Hume abandoned. Its use marks the fact that his tacit subject-predicate bias is slight in its warping effect. He first (I, I, 8) explains: “. I have used it (ie. idea) to express whatever is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking. . . .”” But later (III, III, 6 and 7), without any explicit notice of the widening of use, he writes: “. . . and ideas become **

18 Ttalics mine.

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