Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

Now philosophy has always proceeded on the sound principle that its generalization must be based upon the primary elements in actual experience as starting points. Greek philosophy had recourse to the common forms of language to suggest its generalizations. It found the typical statement, ‘That stone is grey’; and it evolved the generalization that the actual world can be conceived as a collection of primary substances qualified by universal qualities. Of course, this was not the only generalization evolved: Greek philosophy was subtle and multiform, also it was not inflexibly consistent. But this general notion was always influencing thought, explicitly or implicitly.

A theory of knowledge was also needed. Again philosophy started on a sound principle, that all knowledge is grounded on perception. Perception was then analysed, and found to be the awareness that a universal quality is qualifying a particular substance. Thus perception is the catching of a universal quality in the act of qualifying a particular substance. It was then asked, how the perceiver perceives; and the answer is by his organs of sensation. Thus the universal qualities which qualify the perceived substances are, in respect to the

perceiver, his private sensations referred to particular substances other than himself. So far, the tradition of philosophy includes, among other elements, a factor of extreme objectivism in metaphysics, whereby the subjectpredicate form of proposition is taken as expressing a fundamental metaphysical truth. Descartes modified traditional philosophy in two opposite ways. He increased the metaphysical emphasis on the substancequality forms of thought. The actual things ‘required nothing but themselves in order to exist,’ and were to be thought of in terms of their qualities, some of them essential attributes, and others accidental modes. He also laid down the principle, that those substances which are the subjects enjoying conscious experiences, provide the primary data for philosophy, namely, themselves as in the enjoyment of such experience. This is the famous subjectivist bias which entered into modern philosophy through Descartes. In this doctrine Descartes undoubtedly made the greatest philosophical discovery since the age of Plato and Aristotle. For his doctrine directly traversed the notion that the proposition, ‘This stone is grey, expresses a primary form of known fact from which metaphysics can start its generalizations. If we are to go back to the subjective enjoyment of experience, the type of primary starting point is ‘my perception of this stone as grey.’ Primitive men were not metaphysicians, nor were they interested in the expression of concrete experience. Their language merely expressed useful abstractions, such as ‘greyness of the stone.’ But like Columbus who never visited America, Descartes missed the full sweep of his own discovery, and he and his successors, Locke and Hume, continued to construe the functionings of the subjective enjoyment of experience according to the substance-quality categories. Yet if the enjoyment of experience be the constitutive subjective fact, these categories have lost all claim to any fundamental character in metaphysics. Hume—to proceed at once to the consistent exponent of the method—looked for a

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universal quality to function as qualifying the mind, by way of explanation of its perceptive enjoyment. Now if we scan ‘my perception of this stone as grey’ in order to find a universal, the only available candidate is ‘greyness.’ Accordingly for Hume, ‘greyness,’ functioning as a sensation qualifying the mind, is a fundamental type of fact for metaphysical generalization. The result is Hume’s simple impressions of sensation, which form the starting point of his philosophy. But this is an entire muddle for the perceiving mind is not grey, and so grey is now made to perform a new role. From the original fact ‘my perception of this stone as grey,’ Hume extracts ‘Awareness of sensation of greyness’; and puts it forward as the ultimate datum in this element of experience.

He has discarded the objective actuality of the stoneimage in his search for a universal quality: this ‘objective actuality’ is Descartes’ realitas objectiva.’ Hume’s search was undertaken in obedience to a metaphysical principle which had lost all claim to validity, if the Cartesian discovery be accepted. He is then content with ‘sensation of greyness,’ which is just as much a particular as the original stone-image. He is aware of ‘this sensation of greyness. What he has done is to assert arbitrarily the ‘subjectivist’ and ‘sensationalist’ principles as applying to the datum for experience: the notion ‘this sensation of greyness’ has no reference to any other actual entity. Hume thus applies to the experiencing subject Descartes’ principle, that it requires no other actual entity in order to exist. The fact that finally Hume criticizes the Cartesian notion of mind, does not alter the other fact that his antecedent arguments presuppose that notion.

It is to be noticed that Hume can only analyse the sensation in terms of an universal and of its realization in the prehending mind. For example, to take the first examples which in his T'reatise he gives of such analysis, we find ‘red,’ ‘scarlet,’ ‘orange,’ ‘sweet,’ ‘bitter.’ Thus Hume describes ‘impressions of sensation’ in the exact terms in which the philosophy of organism describes conp. 243ceptual feelings. They are the particular feelings of universals, and are not feelings of other particular existents exemplifying universals. Hume admits this identification, and can find no distinction except in ‘force and vivacity.’ He writes: “The first circumstance that strikes my eye, is the great resemblance between our impressions and ideas in every particular except their degree of force and vivacity.”