Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

Hume’s account of the process discoverable in ‘the soul’ is as follows: first, impressions of sensation, of unknown origin; then, ideas of such impressions, ‘derived from’ the impressions; then, impressions of reflection ‘derived from’ the antecedent ideas; and then, ideas of impressions of reflection. Somewhere in this process, there is to be found repetition of impressions, and thence by ‘habit’—by which we may suppose that a particular mode of ‘derivation’ is meant—by habit, a repetition of the correlate ideas; and thence expectancy of the repetition of the correlate impressions. This expectancy would be an ‘impression of reflection.’ It is difficult to understand why Hume exempts ‘habit’ from the same criticism as that applied to the notion of ‘cause.’ We have no ‘impression’ of ‘habit,’ just as we have no ‘impression’ of ‘cause.’ Cause, repetition, habit are all in the same boat.

Somewhat inconsistently, Hume never allows impressions of sensation to be derived from the correlate ideas; though, as the difference between them only consists in ‘force and vivacity,’ the reason for this refusal cannot be founded in his philosophy. The truth is that Hume retained an obstinate belief in an external world which his principles forbade him to confess in his philosophical constructions. He reserved that belief for his daily life, and for his historical and sociological writings, and for his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

The merit of Hume’s account is that the process described is within ‘the soul.’ In the philosophy of organism ‘the soul’ as it appears in Hume, and ‘the mind’ as it appears in Locke and Hume, are replaced by the phrases ‘the actual entity,’ and ‘the actual occasion,’ these phrases being synonymous.

Two defects, found equally in Locke and in Hume, are, first, the confusion between a Lockian ‘idea’ and

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consciousness of such an idea; and, secondly, the assigned relations between ‘ideas’ of sensation and ‘ideas’ of reflections. In Hume’s language, this latter point is concerned with the relations between ‘impressions of sensation’ and ‘impressions of reflection. Hume and Locke, with the overintellectualist bias prevalent among philosophers, assume that emotional feelings are necessarily derivative from sensations. This is conspicuously not the case; the correlation between such feelings and sensations is on the whole a secondary effect. Emotions conspicuously brush aside sensations and fasten upon the ‘particular’ objects to which—in Locke’s phrase—certain ‘ideas’ are ‘determined.’ The confinement of our prehension of other actual entities to the mediation of private sensations is pure myth. The converse doctrine is nearer the truth: the more primitive mode of objectification is via emotional tone, and only in exceptional organisms does objectification, via sensation, supervene with any effectiveness. In their doctrine on this point, Locke and Hume were probably only repeating the mediaeval tradition, and they have passed on the tradition to their successors. None the less, the doctrine is founded upon no necessity of thought, and lacks empirical confirmation. If we consider the matter physiologically, the emotional tone depends mainly on the condition of the viscera which are peculiarly ineffective in generating sensations. Thus the whole notion of prehension should be inverted. We prehend other actual entities more primitively by direct mediation of emotional tone, and only secondarily and waveringly by direct mediation of sense. The two modes fuse with important effects upon our perceptive knowledge. This topic must be reserved (cf. Parts III and IV) for further discussion; but it is fundamental in the philosophy of organism. One difficulty in appealing to modern psychology, for the purpose of a preliminary survey of the nature of experience, is that so much of that science is based upon the presupposition of the sensationalist mythology. Thus the simp. 215pler, more naive surveys of Locke and Hume are philosophically the more useful.

Later, in Part III, a ‘prehension’ will be analysed into ‘prehending subject,’ ‘object prehended,’ and ‘subjective form.’ The philosophy of organism follows Locke in admitting particular ‘exterior things’ into the category of ‘object prehended.’ It also follows Hume in his admission at the end of his Appendix to the Treatise: “Had I said that two ideas of the same object can only be different by their different feeling, I should have been nearer the truth.’ What Hume here calls ‘feeling’ is expanded in the philosophy of organism into the doctrine of ‘subjective form.’ But there is another ineradicable difference between some prehensions, namely, their diversity of prehending subjects, when the two prehensions are in that respect diverse. The subsequent uses of the term ‘feeling’ are in the sense of the ‘positive’ type of prehensions, and not in the sense in which Hume uses it in the above quotation.

The approximation of the philosophy of organism to Santayana’s doctrine of ‘animal faith’ is effected by this doctrine of objectification by the mediation of ‘feeling.’

Santayana would deny that ‘animal faith’ has in it any element of givenness. This denial is presumably made in deference to the sensationalist doctrine, that all knowledge of the external world arises by the mediation of private sensations. If we allow the term ‘animal faith’ to describe a kind of perception which has been neglected by the philosophic tradition, then practically the whole of Santayana’s discussion *° is in accord with the organic philosophy.

The divergence from, and the analogy to, Santayana’s doctrine can be understood by quoting two sentences: “T propose therefore to use the word existence . . . to designate not data of intuition but facts or events believed to occur in nature. These facts or events will include, first, intuitions themselves, or instances of con-

7° Cf. his Scepticism and Animal Faith.

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sciousness, like pains and pleasures and all remembered experiences and mental discourse; and second, physical things and events, having a transcendent relation to the data of intuition which, in belief, may be used as signs forsthem; 7