Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

In two extreme cases the initial data of a feeling have a unity of their own. In one case, the data reduce to a single actual entity, other than the subject of the feeling; and in the other case the data reduce to a single eternal object. These are called ‘primary feelings.’ A particular feeling divorced from its subject is nonsense.

There are thus two laws respecting the feelings constituting the complex satisfaction of an actual entity: (i) An entity can only be felt once, and (ii) the diverse feelings, in the same subject, of the same entity as datum which are to be unified into one feeling, must be compatible in their treatment of the entity felt. In conformity with this pre-established harmony, ‘incompatibility’ would have dictated from the beginning that some ‘feeling’ be replaced by a negative prehension.

SECTION X

The subjective forms of feelings are best discussed in connection with the different types of feelings which can arise. This classification into types has regard to the differences among feelings in respect to their initial data, their objective data, and their subjective forms. But these sources of difference cannot wholly be kept separate.

A feeling is the appropriation of some elements in the universe to be components in the real internal constitution of its subject. The elements are the initial data; they are what the feeling feels. But they are felt under an abstraction. The process of the feeling involves negative prehensions which effect elimination. Thus the initial data are felt under a ‘perspective’ which is the objective datum of the feeling.

In virtue of this elimination the components of the complex objective datum have become ‘objects’ intervening in the constitutions of the subject of the feeling. In the phraseology of mathematical physics a feeling has a

p. 354

‘vector’ character. A feeling is the agency by which other things are built into the constitution of its one subject in process of concrescence. Feelings are constitutive of the nexus by reason of which the universe finds its unification ever renewed by novel concrescence. The unlverse is always one, since there is no surveying it except from an actual entity which unifies it. Also the universe is always new, since the immediate actual entity is the superject of feelings which are essentially novelties.

The essential novelty of a feeling attaches to its subjective form. The initial data, and even the nexus which is the objective datum, may have served other feelings with other subjects. But the subjective form is the immediate novelty; it is how that subject is feeling that objective datum. There is no tearing this subjective form from the novelty of this concrescence. It is enveloped in the immediacy of its immediate present. The fundamental example of the notion ‘quality inhering is particular substance’ is afforded by ‘subjective form inhering in feeling.’ If we abstract the form from the feeling, we are left with an eternal object as the remnant of subjective form.

A feeling can be genetically described in terms of its process of origination, with its negative prehensions whereby its many initial data become its complex objective datum. In this process the subjective form originates, and carries into the feeling its own history transformed into the way in which the feeling feels. The way in which the feeling feels expresses how the feeling came into being. It expresses the purpose which urged it forward, and the obstacles which it encountered, and the indeterminations which were dissolved by the originative decisions of the subject.

There are an indefinite number of types of feeling according to the complexity of the initial data which the feeling integrates, and according to the complexity of the objective datum which it finally feels. But there are three primary types of feeling which enter into the formap. 355tion of all the more complex feelings. These types are: (i) that of simple physical feelings, (ii) that of conceptual feelings, and (ili) that of transmuted feelings. In a simple physical feeling, the initial datum is a single actual entity, in a conceptual feeling, the objective datum is an eternal object, in a transmuted feeling, the objective datum is a nexus of actual entities. Simple physical feelings and transmuted feelings make up the class of physical feelings.

In none of these feelings, taken in their original purity devoid of accretions from later integrations, does the subjective form involve consciousness. Although in a propositional feeling the subjective form may involve judgment, this element in the subjective form is not necessarily present.

One final remark must be added to the general description of a feeling. A feeling is a component in the concrescence of a novel actual entity. The feeling is always novel in reference to its data; since its subjective form, though it must always have reproductive reference to the data, is not wholly determined by them. The process of the concrescence is a progressive integration of feelings controlled by their subjective forms. In this synthesis, feelings of an earlier phase sink into the components of some more complex feeling of a later phase. Thus each phase adds its element of novelty, until the final phase in which the one complex ‘satisfaction’ is reached. Thus the actual entity, as viewed morphologically through its ‘satisfaction,’ 1s novel in reference to any one of its component feelings. It presupposes those feelings. But conversely, no feeling can be abstracted either from its data, or its subject. It is essentially a feeling aiming at that subject, and motivated by that aim. Thus the subjective form embodies the pragmatic aspect of the feeling; for the datum is felt with that subjective form in order that the subject may be the superject which it is.

In the analysis of a feeling, whatever presents itself as also ante rem is a datum, whatever presents itself asp. 356 exclusively in re is subjective form, whatever presents itself in re and post rem is ‘subject-superject. This doctrine of ‘feeling’ is the central doctrine respecting the becoming of an actual entity. In a feeling the actual world, selectively appropriated, is the presupposed datum, not formless but with its own realized form selectively germane, in other words ‘objectified.’ The subjective form is the ingression of novel form peculiar to the new particular fact, and with its peculiar mode of fusion with the objective datum. The subjective form in abstraction from the feeling is merely a complex eternal object. In the becoming, it meets the ‘data’ which are selected from the actual world. In other words, the data are already ‘in being.’ There the term ‘in being’ is for the moment used as equivalent to the term ‘in realization.’

SECTION XI