Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

evidence of a world of actual entities, if the immediate actual entity discloses them as essential to its own composition. Descartes’ notion of an unessential experience of the external world is entirely alien to the organic philosophy. This is the root point of divergence; and is the reason why the organic philosophy has to abandon any approach to the substance-quality notion of actuality. The organic philosophy interprets experience as meaning the ‘self-enjoyment of being one among many, and of being one arising out of the composition of many.’ Descartes interprets experiences as meaning the self-enjoyment, by an individual substance, of its qualification by ideas.

SECTION II

Locke explicitly discards metaphysics. His enquiry has a limited scope: ‘This therefore being my purpose, to inquire into the original, certainty and extent of human knowledge, together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent, I shall not at present meddle with the physical consideration of the mind, or trouble myself to examine wherein its essence consists, . . . It shall suffice to my present purpose, to consider the discerning faculties of a man as they are employed about the objects which they have to do with; ...”* The enduring importance of Locke’s work comes from the candour, clarity, and adequacy with which he stated the evidence, uninfluenced by the bias of metaphysical theory. He explained, in the sense of stating plainly, and not in the more usual sense of ‘explaining away.’ By an ironic development in the history of thought, Locke’s successors, who arrogated to themselves the title of ‘empiricists,’ have been chiefly employed in explaining away the obvious facts of experience in obedience to the a priori doctrine of sensationalism, inherited from the mediaeval philosophy which they despised. Locke’s Essay is the invaluable storehouse for those who wish top. 221 confront their metaphysical constructions by a recourse to the facts.

* Cf. Essay, I, I, 2.

Hume clipped his explanation by this a priori theory, which he states explicitly in the first quotation made from his Treatise in the previous chapter. It cannot be too often repeated: “We may observe, that it is universally allowed by philosophers, and is besides pretty obvious of itself, that nothing is ever really present with the mind but its preceptions or impressions and _ ideas, and that external objects become known to us only by those perceptions they occasion. To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive.

Hume, in agreement with what ‘is universally allowed by philosophers,’ interprets this statement in a sensationalist sense. In accordance with this sense, an impression is nothing else than a particular instance of the mind’s awareness of a universal, which may either be simple, or may be a manner of union of many simple universals. For Hume, hating, loving, thinking, feeling, are nothing but perceptions derivate from these fundamental impressions. This is the a priori sensationalist dogma, which bounds all Hume’s discoveries in the realm of experience. It is probable that this dogma was in Locke’s mind throughout the earlier portion of his Essay. But Locke was not seeking consistency with any a priori dogma. He also finds in experience ‘ideas’ with characteristics which ‘determine them to this or that particular existent.’ Such inconsistency with their dogma shocks empiricists, who refuse to admit experience, naked and unashamed, devoid of their a priori figleaf. Locke is merely stating what,.in practice, nobody doubts. But Locke would have agreed with Hume in refusing to admit that ‘ideas of reflection’ may be directly ‘determined to some particular existent,’ without the intervention of ‘ideas of sensation.’ In this respect, Locke was a sensationalist, and the philosophy of organism is not sensationalist. But Locke’s avoidance of metaphysics only led him up to a stage of thought for which meta-

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physics is essential to clarity. The questions as to the status of a ‘particular existent,’ and of an ‘idea determined to a particular existent,’ demand metaphysical discussion. Locke is never tired of disparaging the notion of ‘substance’; but he gives no hint of alternative categories which he would employ to analysis the notions of an ‘actual entity’ and of ‘reality.’ But his Essay, however, does contain a line of thought which can be developed into a metaphysic. In the first place, he distinctly holds that ideas of particular existents—for example, the child’s idea of its mother—constitute the fundamental data which the mental functioning welds into a unity by a determinate process of absorption, including comparison, emphasis, and abstraction. He also holds that ‘powers’ are to be ascribed to particular existents whereby the constitutions of other particulars are conditioned. Correlatively, he holds that the constitutions of particular existents must be described so as to exhibit their ‘capacities’ for being conditioned by such ‘powers’ in other particulars. He also holds that all qualities have in some sense a relational element in them. Perhaps, though Locke does not say so, this notion of the relational element in qualities is illustrated in the following passage: “Besides, there is scarce any particular thing existing, which, in some of its simple ideas, does not communicate with a greater, and in others with a less, number of particular beings: . . .”* Locke here expresses the notion of an identity between two simple ideas in the form of a ‘communication’ between the particular existents which possess that common quality. This passage also illustrates Locke’s habit of employing the term ‘idea,’ in a sense other than particular content of an act of awareness. Finally, Locke’s notion of the passage of time is that something is ‘perpetually perishing.’ If he had grasped the notion that the actual entity ‘perishes’ in the passage of time, so that no actual entity changes, he would have arrived * Cf. Essay, III, IX, 14.

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